Interstellar: Every Major Performance, Ranked

It may not be as highly acclaimed or timeless as Christopher Nolan’s all-time finest works, like Inception, Dunkirk, and The Dark Knight trilogy, but 2014’s Interstellar is one of the most thought-provoking and breathtakingly cinematic sci-fi epics in recent memory.

The cast is anchored by Matthew McConaughey as Cooper, a single father who becomes humanity’s last hope when he’s sent into deep space to find us a new home. But McConaughey is backed up by an impressive ensemble containing such huge talents as Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine, and Anne Hathaway. So, here are all the major performances in Interstellar, ranked.

12 Matt Damon As Mann

One of the most curious marketing tricks pulled by Interstellar was leaving Matt Damon out of the trailers. No one knew that Damon was in Interstellar until they were actually watching the movie and he showed up.

His character, Dr. Mann, facilitates a twist as he turns out to be a villain who endangers the whole crew out of selfishness. But the twist is undermined by the fact that it’s Matt Damon. His presence is distracting because it’s unexpected, and also simply unusual.

11 Timothée Chalamet As Young Tom

In the couple of years that followed Interstellar, Timothée Chalamet would become one of the world’s most popular young movie stars with roles in Call Me By Your Name, Lady Bird, and Beautiful Boy.

But while Christopher Nolan clearly saw something in the kid to cast him, he didn’t give Chalamet a lot to do. Cooper clearly favors his daughter Murph over his son Tom, and as a result, Chalamet doesn’t get a chance to shine.

10 Anne Hathaway As Amelia Brand

Anne Hathaway isn’t given a lot of character work to do in Interstellar. She doesn’t really play a character at all; instead, she’s a mouthpiece for various heady monologues straight out of the mind of Christopher Nolan, like her long, winding musing on love being the only thing we can’t measure mathematically.

Hathaway does what she can with the role, but she has far less to do here than she did in her previous collaboration with Nolan, The Dark Knight Rises.

9 Wes Bentley As Doyle

Although he has yet to top his breakout performance in American Beauty, Wes Bentley does an admirable job in the role of Doyle.

Like most of the crew members working with Cooper, Doyle is required for drawn-out scientific explanations, but Bentley does a fine job in each scene.

8 Ellen Burstyn As Old Murph

Ellen Burstyn only appears briefly in Interstellar, at the end of the movie when Cooper has returned to humanity and they’re set up in a giant space station.

Burstyn plays an elderly Murph, who has a sprawling family of her own when she’s reunited with her dad — who, thanks to the laws of science fiction, is now half her age — and she plays the reunion as a really heartfelt moment with Matthew McConaughey.

7 Bill Irwin As TARS

Bill Irwin provided the voice and puppetry for TARS, the A.I. featured in Interstellar. Rather than creating the crew’s robot with CGI, Christopher Nolan wanted to use practical effects.

Although TARS is essentially four metal pillars crawling around without a discernible face or any human features, Irwin’s performance imbues the character with a distinctive personality.

6 Casey Affleck As Adult Tom

Murph still takes precedence over Tom in the later scenes of the movie, but Casey Affleck is given more to do than his younger counterpart, Timothée Chalamet.

Viewers see a glimpse of the raw emotion that would win Affleck an Oscar a couple of years later for his heartbreaking turn in Manchester by the Sea.

5 Mackenzie Foy As Young Murph

It’s not easy for a child actor to hold their own opposite an A-list movie star, but Mackenzie Foy managed it in her scenes with Matthew McConaughey. The first section of Interstellar sets it up as a father-daughter story, but that focus slowly fades as Cooper jets off into space.

Still, Foy’s performance as a young Murph is pretty brilliant, establishing her arc that then continues with Jessica Chastain and Ellen Burstyn.

4 John Lithgow As Donald

Cooper’s father-in-law Donald is the closest thing he has to a mentor. In this classical sci-fi tale, Donald fills the Ben Kenobi role, and John Lithgow is well-suited to that part.

Lithgow plays Donald’s slowly deteriorating mind with tear-jerking poignancy. Although he only appears in the movie’s early scenes, he leaves a lasting impression.

3 Michael Caine As Professor Brand

As with all of his collaborations with Christopher Nolan, Michael Caine’s role in Interstellar required him to deliver several teary-eyed monologues. Nolan knows how to gear a role towards Caine’s strengths as a dramatic actor.

He doesn’t have as many comedic one-liners in Interstellar as he had when he played Alfred, but he has even more emotional scenes, and as one of the greats, Caine nails every single one.

2 Jessica Chastain As Adult Murph

As Murph grows up to become a scientist on the brink of saving humanity and bringing her father home, the duties of playing her are transferred to Jessica Chastain. As always, Chastain’s performance is exquisite, playing on all the emotions that one would go through in the extraordinary circumstances faced by her character.

When she stops hearing from her dad, she starts to resent him. And even though we know he was caught in an accelerated timeline on a distant planet and that’s why he lost touch, we get why she’d be so mad — especially when she reaches the age that he was when he left.

1 Matthew McConaughey As Cooper

At the height of the McConaissance, Matthew McConaughey provided a powerful performance in the lead role of Interstellar. Cooper is one of the last remaining farmers in an increasingly barren America, and McConaughey’s charm sure makes you root for him from the offset.

Whether he’s sobbing through decades’ worth of video messages from his kids that he missed while he was on a planet where time passes much quicker or making humankind’s first leap into a black hole, McConaughey’s performance makes Cooper a compelling protagonist.

About The Author

Ben Sherlock
(3458 Articles Published)

Ben Sherlock is a writer, comedian, independent filmmaker, and Burt Reynolds enthusiast. He writes lists for Screen Rant and features and reviews for Game Rant. He’s currently in pre-production on his first feature (and has been for a while, because filmmaking is expensive). You can catch him performing standup at odd pubs around the UK that will give him stage time. Previously, he wrote for Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop.

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