Jason Sudeikis has certainly come a long way in the past few years. After writing for Saturday Night Live for two years, the comedian joined the cast from 2005 to 2013. While impressing audiences on the hit comedy sketch series, the actor took on a number of roles in a variety of comedy films in the early 2010s. He solidified himself as a great comedic performer.
Now he is the star and co-creator of one of the biggest television series in the world, the winner of multiple Emmys, and is likely going to be one of the most in-demand performers once his television series concludes. After years of working as the supporting player in comedies, Sudeikis is now not only the leading man but an actor who works just as well in dramas and can jump between various genres. He continued to prove his dramatic chops with a deadly serious, excellent performance in South of Heaven, which shows that Sudeikis can shine in an otherwise weak movie. The future certainly looks bright for the performer, and these are the best performances in the actor’s impressive filmography.
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5 It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
20th Television
Sudeikis starred alongside It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia star and co-creator Charlie Day in the 2010 film Going the Distance and 2011’s Horrible Bosses. The two worked so well together and had such great chemistry, that Sudeikis would guest star on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Sudeikis plays Schmitty, a former member of the gang and Charlie’s old roommate who was kicked out to make Charlie feel better. Schmitty is overall well-adjusted compared to the rest of the gang, which annoys them as he tends to upstage them at whatever they wish to accomplish. In many ways, he is the anti-Ted Lasso, as Brandon Zachy writes for CBR.
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4 Horrible Bosses
New Line Cinema
Every summer movie season tends to have that one breakout comedy, and in 2011 it was Horrible Bosses. Sudeikis stars, alongside Charlie Day and Jason Bateman, as a trio of friends who decide to each kill one another’s bosses to make their lives easier. The premise is straightforward, and the trio has great comedic chemistry with one another. Sudeikis gets to shine playing the smooth-talking playboy of the group and has a natural charm that makes some of his more frat boy character tendencies seem charming. For any fans of the royal family, Sudeikis’ first scene is alongside future Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle.
Horrible Bosses was such a hit that it generated a sequel in 2014 Horrible Bosses 2. While it does not strike the same laughs as the first film, it works because the cast does have such strong chemistry together and Sudeikis works as the perfect cool guy contrasted to Jason Bateman’s everyman and Charlie Day’s over-the-top energy.
3 Sleeping With Other People
IFC Films
Sleeping with Other People is a modern reworking of the classic When Harry Met Sally premise of asking if a man and woman can be friends, with a 21st century, hard-R raunchy sexual bend with the new take on the story being the two individuals, Jake (Sudeikis) and Elaine (Alison Brie), having already lost their virginity to one another. Now reuniting years later, the two try to become friends while also balancing their natural sexual attraction and tendency to sabotage any close relationships.
2 Colossal
Neon
A year following Sleeping with Other People, Sudeikis co-starred in Colossal alongside Anne Hathaway. The film is the darkest performance in the actor’s filmography, but not at first, and he displays remarkable range here. The story centers around Hathaway’s character discovering that when she walks through her childhood park, a giant kaiju monster manifests in Seoul, South Korea and mimics her actions. Sudeikis plays Oscar, the childhood best friend of Hathaway’s character who has a giant robot manifest when he walks through the park.
At the beginning of the film, Oscar is positioned as the traditional ’nice guy’ who used to have a childhood crush. Yet the movie early on hints at something much darker underneath the surface, as Colossal peels back the nature of the nice guy visage and reveals an extremely entitled, toxic man. Sudeikis’ ability to transition from his traditional straight-man comedic roots into a psychologically terrifying villain helps make Colossal one of the best movies released during the 2010s.
1 Ted Lasso
AppleTV+
While it might be the obvious pick, sometimes that is for a reason and Ted Lasso is not only Jason Sudeikis’ best performance but likely his most defining one. What began as a series of promos for NBC Sports’ coverage of the Premier League in 2013 has now led to a series that received critical acclaim and multiple awards, including two back-to-back Emmy’s for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for Sudeikis.
Ted Lasso is a difficult character to pull off because in the wrong hands the character can come across as cartoonish, but Sudeikis so effortlessly brings the character’s optimistic worldview to life and conveys every line of dialog and character interaction with a good nature spirit he wins over the audience immediately to the core concept of the series. In later parts of the show, Sudeikis is able to deconstruct aspects of the Lasso character to reveal some of his tragic backstory and gets some incredibly poignant moments. Ted Lasso has now become an iconic character in television history, inspiring viewers to take the ‘be curious, not judgmental’ mindset to heart. Even when the series is over (and it appears to be heading towards a conclusion in season three), audiences will still be quoting Ted Lasso.
