Dee Dee Blanchard

Dee Dee Blanchard is the devoted single mother of Gypsy, a bright-eyed teenager who uses a wheelchair and needs constant medical care. She keeps their pink house cheerful, charms neighbors with casseroles and church-lady warmth, and manages every doctor visit and medication herself. Everyone in town calls her a saint. She rarely lets her daughter out of sight.

Patricia Arquette buries herself in prosthetics and a honeyed Southern drawl, and the effect is uncanny before you understand why: her tenderness toward Gypsy always carries a faint current of control. The writing lets her seem simply exhausted and loving, so Arquette's small tightenings — a held gaze, a too-quick correction — do the unsettling work instead of exposition.