Lili Taylor - Career

Career

Taylor has appeared in dozens of films since 1988, including Dogfight, Mystic Pizza, and Rudy. Her work has mostly been in independent films and theater. She played the role of Lisa Kimmel Fisher (mostly in the second and third seasons) in the HBO drama Six Feet Under for which she was nominated for an Emmy award.

Taylor played supporting roles in Mystic Pizza (1988) and Say Anything... (1989). In Mystic Pizza, she played Jojo, a young woman working in a pizzeria. The film co-starred Annabeth Gish and Julia Roberts.

Taylor then starred in Dogfight (1991) directed by Nancy Savoca, in which she played an unattractive young woman who is taken to a cruel contest by a Marine (played by River Phoenix) under the pretense of a date. In 1993, she again teamed up with Savoca for Household Saints.

Director Robert Altman hired Taylor in 1993 for his epic Los Angeles drama Short Cuts, in which Taylor shared scenes with Lily Tomlin. The film also featured Jack Lemmon, Tom Waits, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Julianne Moore and Robert Downey Jr.

Taylor portrayed Valerie Solanas in Mary Harron's I Shot Andy Warhol (1996). The same year, she co-starred in Girls Town with Bruklin Harris and Aunjanue Ellis, where three inner-city friends dealt with a friend's suicide, and later in Ransom, as a two-faced caterer working for Mel Gibson's character and who then helps kidnap and hold his son ransom.

1998 saw Taylor teaming with John Waters, in Pecker. The film, co-starring Edward Furlong, Christina Ricci and Mary Kay Place, followed a young Baltimore photographer as he entered the New York art world. Taylor portrayed his art dealer.

In 1999, Taylor starred in Jan de Bont's remake of The Haunting.

In 2001, Taylor appeared in the independent feature Julie Johnson. The film, co-starring Courtney Love, centered on a Long Island mother and housewife who kicks out her husband to pursue her dream of studying science.

In early 2004, Taylor made her New York City stage debut in Wallace Shawn's Aunt Dan and Lemon in the role of Lemon. She won the 2005 Best Actress award at the Copenhagen International Film Festival for her role in Factotum. In 2006, Taylor worked again with Mary Harron in The Notorious Bettie Page.

In the Lifetime cable network's hour-long comedy-drama series State of Mind, Taylor starred as a New Haven therapist dealing with a divorce and a parade of quirky clients. She played the daughter of Frank Langella's character in Andrew Wagner's 2007 drama Starting Out in the Evening.

In the 2008 film The Promotion, Taylor played the Scottish wife of John C. Reilly's character.

In 2009, Taylor played Sheriff Lillian Holley of Lake County, Indiana, who incarcerates John Dillinger (played by Johnny Depp), in Michael Mann's Public Enemies.

In 2011, Fence Books released Taylor's audio recording of poet Ariana Reines's Save The World.