Over the course of her career in Hollywood, Brie Larson has taken on a vast array of roles in projects of various sizes. She’s had supporting roles in major Hollywood blockbusters, been the star of some of those blockbusters as well, and even starred on a TV show or two. Across those projects, Larson has consistently found ways to deliver compelling, human performances that tap into the truths beneath her characters. She has a consistently beguiling screen presence, and she’s easily one of the best actors of her generation. Here are the best projects she’s made over the course of her career.

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10. Unicorn Store

Larson got in the director’s chair for this movie and managed to play the role of director/star pretty well. The film, which follows an art school grad named Kit who is forced to take a mundane office job but is offered the chance to fulfil her life-long dream of owning a unicorn. The movie is full of whimsy, but Larson grounds the project in real human emotion, and she’s surrounded by a solid ensemble that makes the whole movie feel resonant instead of corny.

9. The Spectacular Now

Larson is not the female lead of The Spectacular Now, but she easily becomes one of the most fascinating characters in the film. She plays Cassidy, the girl that Miles Teller’s Sutter gets dumped by before he meets Shailene Woodley’s Aimee. Cassidy is the canary in the coal mine in this movie. She’s a totally sensible girl who realizes how messed up Sutter is, and decides she doesn’t want to deal with it anymore. He may be sweet, but he’s also broken, and Aimee will eventually come to share Cassidy’s perspective by the movie’s end.

8. United States of Tara

Before she made her transition to the big screen, Larson’s steadiest gig was on The United States of Tara, where she played the daughter of the show’s central character, a suburban mom struggling with dissociative identity disorder. Larson’s portrayal of a feisty teenage daughter felt like definitive proof that she was the kind of actress who could go toe-to-toe with star Toni Collette — and basically anyone else. Even at that fairly young age, Larson was already proving her skills.

7. The Glass Castle

An adaptation of Jeanette Walls’ biographical novel of the same name, The Glass Castle features Larson reteaming with Destin Daniel Cretton from Short Term 12 to tell the story of a group of siblings who are forced to learn how to care for themselves after they realize the limitations of their parents’ free spirit philosophy. The movie’s not perfect, but as an adult trying to reckon with the way she was raised and how she sees it now, Larson manages to inject nuance into what could be a pat story filled with bad fathers and children who are unaware of how the world sees their parents.

6. Captain Marvel

Larson is given a pretty tough job in Captain Marvel, but she’s captivating enough to pull it off. For most of the film, Larson’s Carol Danvers doesn’t remember who she really is or where she’s come from. For that reason, it can be hard to get a firm handle on what Captain Marvel is actually like, but Larson manages to ground the performance with her natural charisma to a remarkable extent. She may be an amnesiac for much of Captain Marvel, but she’s a pretty compelling amnesiac to watch.

5. Trainwreck

Larson is not Trainwreck‘s lead, but she’s basically perfect casting as Amy Schumer’s sister, a woman who seems to have her life just a little bit more figured out than Amy. Crucially, though, Brie’s Kim is not a perfect mother. She’s just at a different point in her life, and has a different perspective to offer her sister. Trainwreck follows the typical beats of a Judd Apatow comedy, following a suspended adolescent who has to learn how to become an adult, but Larson manages to be more than just a more grown-up alternative in her handful of scenes.

4. Community

Although she only makes a brief pit stop on Community, Larson quickly becomes one of the show’s most appealing minor characters. Thanks to her mutual attraction with Abed, which comes from their shared love of movie and TV tropes, we get to see Larson do some truly endearing flirting with Danny Pudi. Although she wasn’t on the show as much as she could have been, Larson proved here that she can make her characters deeply appealing, even when they behave a little bit strangely.

3. 21 Jump Street

Brie Larson is pretty funny when she gets the chance to be. In 21 Jump Street, her role is primarily that of a love interest, but thanks to her natural skills as a performer, she’s able to transform it into something greater than the sum of her scenes. She also has genuine chemistry with Jonah Hill, who has not very often found himself playing a romantic lead. One of Brie Larson’s chief charms is that she’s great at playing women who are composed and cool, and she works well as Hill’s foil here, in part because she isn’t bothered by his total inelegance.

2. Room

Although it hasn’t had a long shelf-life, Room remains one of Larson’s very best performances. Playing a woman who has become a mother while held captive in a single small room, the movie is chiefly about the emotional toll that that captivity has taken on her, and the way her son reacts to experiencing the world for the first time. Larson is incredible as a woman who is dealing with unimaginable trauma and is asked to simply pick up the broken pieces of the world she left behind and turn them into a place where she and her son can be happy.

1. Short Term 12

Larson’s greatest performance to date comes in Short Term 12, where she plays a counselor at a short-term care facility for at-risk teenagers. When she comes across a girl whose struggles hit a little close to home, Larson’s Grace begins to unravel, but the movie tracks her character’s progression beautifully. This performance is among her most withholding, but that only makes her ultimate release of emotion feel all the more cathartic. Surrounded by a stellar ensemble of up-and-coming talent, Short Term 12 is one of the great movies of the 21st century, and it wouldn’t be nearly as great without Brie at its center.