In 2026, Amanda Peet isn’t interested in holding anything back. In her most recent role in Fantasy Life, she plays Diane, a mother of three and working actor navigating a life that, on paper, is fully intact and quite successful, but internally feels much less stable. It’s a performance that resists easy categorization: there’s no showy breakdown, no clean arc into revelation. Instead, Peet lets Diane exist in a state of low-grade unrest – functional, present, but quietly coming apart in ways the film never overstates. That restraint is part of what helped Fantasy Life from first-time writer-director Matthew Shear take home the Narrative Feature Audience Award at SXSW 2025.

When I asked Amanda about the overlap between her own life and Diane’s, and whether she ever tries to keep a degree of distance from a role like this, she didn’t hesitate. “I don’t ever approach something with the idea that I don’t want to pour too much of myself into it,” she said. “If anything, my job is to pour as much as possible into a role so that it feels real to the viewer.”

That instinct lines up with how Fantasy Life approaches mental illness. Diane isn’t written as some extreme or sensationalized version of instability. She’s still working, still parenting, still moving through the world. But there’s an undercurrent there, something anxious, uneasy, unresolved. It’s something Peet immediately connected to in the script.

“I feel like in a lot of movies and TV shows, when you have a character who is mentally ill, that person is like, drooling and wandering the hallways or in a white padded cell getting injections,” she said. “And I really liked that Matthew wanted to convey mental illness for people who are really high functioning and who are just walking around on the earth with dreadful anxiety and OCD.”

The film holds back key information about Diane until late, saving a scene with her psychiatrist for the end rather than using it as an early roadmap. That choice stuck with Peet. “That was really moving to me,” she said. “That you don’t really hear the full gamut until the very end.”

Much of Diane’s emotional life is communicated through smaller, more uncomfortable moments, especially in her dynamic with Sam (Matthew Shear), a law school dropout turned babysitter for her three daughters who begins to drift into her orbit in ways neither of them fully understands. In an early scene on the couch, as they watch Battlestar Galactica, she casually slips her feet under him. It’s intimate, awkward, and loaded with possibility without ever tipping into something overt. Asked how she approached building that kind of chemistry with Shear, who also directs the film, Peet downplayed any sense of calculation.

“I didn’t think about it that much,” she said. “I think probably the fact that he was my director helped a little bit, because I wanted to please him. Obviously, I didn’t want to fuck up.” She laughed. “So that probably contributed to my feelings of needing him, or needing his approval, or being interested in what he thought. But it was really natural, honestly.”

That looseness – or maybe just a lack of overthinking – is something Peet says has come with time. When asked what she leans on most as an actor now, she didn’t frame it as a strength so much as a shift in approach. “I just think that it’s gotten easier as I’ve gotten older,” she said. “I feel like I’m much better at not playing for results. I’m better able to let go, let my imagination take over. Do what I used to do when I was younger, like, if someone tells you this is a hot cup of coffee, you just believe it.”

That change, she said, has made the work more immediate and, frankly, more enjoyable. “It’s a lot more fun to let go and not be as calculating, as interested in results, as trying to orchestrate something: trying to cry, trying to not cry, trying to be funny,” she said. “I try to do one take at least where I just don’t think.”

That same simplicity carries over into how she chooses projects. While a lot of actors describe their careers in terms of evolution or reinvention, Peet traced her shift back to something more practical: paying attention to the writing: “I think part of it was when I married David [Benioff of Game of Thrones fame],” she said. “He was always saying, this isn’t going to do anything for you. There’s nothing to play.” She paused, smiling. “There were a few times in the beginning where I didn’t listen to him, and he was right.” Now, she said, that’s the filter. “I just think about the writing. I don’t really think about anything else, honestly.”

But Amanda remains quick to undercut any of it. When I brought up a gag in the film where Diane gets mistaken for Lake Bell, she didn’t hesitate saying that this is a frequent occurrence. “Yeah, it happens all the time,” she said.

She recalled a recent moment in a shop, when a saleswoman confidently approached her while her daughters looked on. “My teen girls are just not very impressed with me ever,” she said. “So the whole thing was just added insult to injury. Someone came up to me and was like, I love you Lake, blah blah blah,” she said. “And I was like, I could sign this, but I don’t want to forge her signature.”

Amanda doesn’t seem interested in faking anything these days. She’s just looking for good writing and a chance to approach her work with authenticity. In Fantasy Life, that tactic pays off.

Fantasy Life will open in New York theaters March 27, nationwide on April 7.

For other reviews, interviews, and featured articles, be sure to:

Follow Silver Screen Riot on Letterboxd
Follow Silver Screen Riot on Facebook 
Follow Silver Screen Riot on Twitter
Follow Silver Screen Riot on BlueSky
Follow Silver Screen Riot on Substack