Elsie Fisher

Elsie Fisher was a working voice actor before she was ten, playing Agnes in Despicable Me and its sequel, which is the sort of early credit that usually leads nowhere. Then Bo Burnham cast her in Eighth Grade (2018) and she gave one of the few performances of an American teenager that adults have not been able to argue with. It brought her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a comedy or musical.

What makes that performance unusual is that Kayla Day is herself performing constantly, filming advice videos for an audience of nobody, and Fisher plays the gap between the confident YouTube voice and the girl operating it without ever winking at the camera. Self-consciousness is one of the hardest things to act, because acting it is the opposite of having it. She does it by underplaying: mumbles, half-finished sentences, a face that keeps checking whether it is allowed.

She has spent the years since inside horror, which suits her, since her natural register is watchfulness. There is Lila in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Abby in My Best Friend's Exorcism, Joy in Castle Rock, and, in a different key, Katie Harris in Barry. The smaller recent films are the more interesting ones: Sara in Memory, Lynn in Christmas Eve in Miller's Point. She is still in her early twenties and, on the evidence, in no hurry to be a star.