The best and worst screen mammies

It's mother's day today. It's a day for celebrating mothers all around the world for those of us lucky enough to still have our mam's. Now that you are lying on the couch half dead from the mega breakfast you've cooked for her or had cooked for you here's something to aid your digestion. A list of some of the most memorable mammies to ever grace the silver screen. Some of them are just lovely but as in real life some of them are absolute fuckin weapons as well.

Some spoilers for old films below

Jackie Weaver - Animal Kingdom

Janine Cody aka Smurf. The matriarch of a thieving pack of animals. A terrifying woman who has a very unhealthy relationship with her sons. Her sons are a pack of murdering drug dealers but she's the scariest person in the house. And quite possibly the scariest thing in Australia. Ellen Barking plays her well in the TV version but Jackie Weaver makes her a chilling creation.

Brenda Fricker - My Left Foot

Bridget Brown. Mother of Christy and 12 other children. Great at the aul saving. A saint, there's no other way to describe her. Her love and devotion and patience alone helped Christy become an artist. In one scene she literally digs the foundation for his future. An Oscar winning role and rightly so. The best Irish mammy ever. Well apart from my own. Of course.

Anjelica Huston - The Grifters

Lilly Dillon. A terrifying creation. That hair. The constant fag on the go. She's a con artist extraordinaire. No one is safe from her. Not even her son. She tries to con him, when that doesn't work she flirts with him and of course that ends with his throat being slashed and him bleeding out on the floor. And then she walks away. She's some piece of work.

Joan Crawford - Mildred Pierce

Mildred Pierce. A level headed loving mother who build her own business empire and who has the misfortune to be saddled with an absolute prick of a daughter. No matter what her daughter throws in her face Mildred still loves her and in the end, in the face of an ultimate betrayal is still willing to put everything on the line for her. Another oscar winning performance.

Piper Laurie - Carrie

Margaret White. A terrifying creation. Overbearing and ultra religious. So suffocating in her parenting of her poor daughter Carrie that it kicks Carrie's telekinetic powers into overdrive and we all know how that goes. The kind of mother who thinks breasts and menstruation are evil and who beats this into her daughter's head. Owner of the world's scariest crucifix. Dies an immensely satisfying death.

Jada Pinkett Smith - Menace II Society

Ronnie Richards. A selfless ray of light in the darkness of the Jordan Downs housing project in South Central L.A. Left the craziness behind to raise a son and go back to school. A beautiful soul. Decides to sacrifice her old life and begin again in Atlanta to give herself and her son a chance to thrive. Gets out by the skin of her teeth.

Diane Ladd - Wild At Heart

Marietta Fortune. A very scary woman. Overbearing as hell. Does things in the best interests of her family but does tend to go a bit far ie hiring knife wielding criminals and gangsters to find and kill her daughter's boyfriend. Of course things backfire which leads to a lipstick scene that will hate your dreams.

Sigourney Weaver - Aliens

Ok, we never get to meet her real daughter but the mother/daughter bond Ellen Ripley creates with little Newt gives a brilliant action film a big ol' pile of heart. She'll risk her life for her new charge after only knowing her for a day or two. Problematically she does this by murdering the newborn offspring of another mother but we'll forgive her today.

Mo'Nique - Precious

Mary Lee Johnson. An absolute wagon. The kind of character you want to see take a hatchet to the face after 30 seconds in her presence. She physically, mentally and sexually abuses her daughter Precious all because she was jealous when her own boyfriend made her daughter pregnant. A performance so potent that I can't even look at this actor anymore. 

Jo-Beth Williams - Poltergeist

Diane Freeling, the kind of mammy we'd all want if demonic native american spirits dragged us into the TV. The kind of mammy who loves and trusts her kids to do their own thing (witness her reaction to her daughter and the builders wolf whistling her) but who will risk everything for them when they need her. Her rescue of her daughter Carol Anne is a hero moment up there with the best of them. And she still has time to smoke a joint or two.


This tiny list is missing dozens of the most memorable movie mammies, both good and bad. Who would you pick?