Olivia Cooke Movies and TV Shows: Best Roles List

If you’ve been watching Olivia Cooke on HBO’s House of the Dragon and wondering where you recognize her from, the short answer is: almost everywhere. She’s carved out a career that moves seamlessly from indie psychological thrillers to Steven Spielberg blockbusters, racking up credits on both the big and small screen since her breakout in 2013. This guide pulls together her most talked-about roles, what critics and audiences actually rated, and where to find her work across streaming platforms.

Known For (IMDb): Ready Player One (7.4) ·
Highest Rated: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (7.7) ·
Recent TV: House of the Dragon (2022) ·
Other Hits: Sound of Metal (7.7) ·
Upcoming: The Girlfriend (2025)

The table below consolidates the key data points from her filmography: birth information, breakout moments, and her highest-rated projects across both Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb.

What is Olivia Cooke best known for?

Olivia Cooke built her reputation by choosing roles that push against type. Her breakout came as Emma Decody in Bates Motel, the dark prequel series that ran from 2013 to 2017 on A&E and earned an impressive 8.1 IMDb rating (Screen Rant). From there, she moved into prestige indie territory with films like Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, where she played Rachel and earned two award nominations including Best Female Newcomer at the Empire Awards (Collider).

House of the Dragon

Cooke’s profile jumped significantly when she landed the role of Alicent Hightower in HBO’s House of the Dragon, the blockbuster prequel to Game of Thrones that premiered in 2022. Her portrayal of the complex political figure earned critical attention and put her in front of the largest audience of her career. TV Guide lists the role prominently among her recent credits, reflecting how central her character was to the show’s first season (TV Guide).

Ready Player One

Ready Player One marked Cooke’s first major Hollywood entrance. Directed by Steven Spielberg and released in March 2018, she played Art3mis (Samantha) alongside Tye Sheridan in a film that grossed hundreds of millions worldwide. Rotten Tomatoes logged the film at 71% and her performance anchored one of the story’s emotional through-lines (Rotten Tomatoes). The film holds a 7.4 rating on IMDb (Screen Rant), placing it comfortably in solid commercial territory.

Bates Motel

Before either of those projects, Bates Motel gave Cooke her first series-regular role and a chance to develop chemistry with co-stars Freddie Highmore and Vera Farmiga. The series ran for five seasons and won three People’s Choice Awards, with Cooke playing Emma Decody, the daughter of Norma Bates’s blind friend (Collider). Warner Bros. Fandom Wiki notes the show gave Cooke her first sustained exposure to American television audiences (Warner Bros. Fandom).

What is Olivia Cooke’s most famous role?

Defining “most famous” depends on whether you’re measuring by IMDb votes, critical acclaim, or cultural impact. On pure rating quality, her highest Rotten Tomatoes score belongs to Sound of Metal (2019), an acclaimed drama about a heavy metal drummer whose life unravels when he loses his hearing. Cooke played Lou, Ruben’s girlfriend, in a film that earned a staggering 97% on Rotten Tomatoes — one of the highest scores in her entire filmography (Rotten Tomatoes).

House of the Dragon

By audience reach, though, House of the Dragon takes the crown. The HBO series attracted millions of viewers per episode, and Cooke’s Alicent Hightower appeared in nearly every episode of Season 1. Her performance was described by Collider as one that “demonstrated her ability to anchor a major prestige production” (Collider). For mainstream name recognition, this role has likely introduced her to the widest audience.

Thoroughbreds

Critics who prefer her edgier work point to Thoroughbreds (2017) as her best showcase. Premiering at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, this psychological thriller featured Cooke alongside Anya Taylor-Joy in a story about wealthy suburban teens planning a murder. The film scored 87% on Rotten Tomatoes and put Cooke in the conversation for serious dramatic roles (Rotten Tomatoes). Her character Amanda was called “multifaceted” by critics who noted her ability to shift between cold calculation and fragile vulnerability.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

The film that many fans first discovered Cooke in was Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015), a Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner. She played Rachel, a teenage leukemia patient who befriends an awkward film student. The film holds 81% on Rotten Tomatoes and 7.7 on IMDb, and it earned Cooke her first major award nominations (Rotten Tomatoes). Collider noted her “raw emotional honesty” in the role as particularly striking (Collider).

Olivia Cooke’s 10 Best Movies And TV Shows

Ranking any actor’s “best” work involves balancing Rotten Tomatoes scores, IMDb ratings, and plain rewatch value. What follows is an editorial judgment of her strongest credits, drawing on critic and audience scores to create a useful hierarchy.

Top IMDb Picks

Based on IMDb ratings from Screen Rant, here’s how her most-watched projects rank: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (7.7), Slow Horses (7.7), Sound of Metal (7.7), Bates Motel (8.1), and Ready Player One (7.4) (Screen Rant). The clustering of 7.7 scores suggests that once you get past Bates Motel, her film work has been remarkably consistent in quality.

Rotten Tomatoes List

Rotten Tomatoes adds another dimension with critic consensus scores. Her standout performers there include Sound of Metal (97%), Little Fish (91% audience score), Vanity Fair (89%), and Thoroughbreds (87%) (Rotten Tomatoes). Conversely, her horror outing Ouija landed at just 6% — a reminder that not every project can be a winner. The 91-point gap between her best and worst reviewed films is striking.

Prime Video Credits

Several of Cooke’s films and series are available on Prime Video, including Ready Player One (which was available to stream following its theatrical run), Bates Motel (previously available on Netflix, now shifting between platforms), and House of the Dragon (Max/HBO Max) (Screen Rant). Slow Horses, where she played MI5 agent Sid Baker, streams on Apple TV+, making her work accessible across multiple major platforms.

Was Olivia Cooke in EastEnders?

No — Olivia Cooke never appeared in EastEnders. She did, however, audition for the long-running British soap opera early in her career before ultimately passing on the role. Warner Bros. Fandom Wiki notes that she also turned down an offer from Hollyoaks, another UK soap, in favor of pursuing other opportunities (Warner Bros. Fandom). She ultimately landed Bates Motel as her first major television credit, a path that kept her outside the British soap orbit entirely.

Early Auditions

Growing up in Oldham, Greater Manchester, England, Cooke had early exposure to the British television industry and its casting pipelines. Rather than going the traditional soap route, she angled toward film and international television projects from the start. Screen Rant notes that her decision to pass on British soaps proved strategic — within two years of turning down EastEnders, she had secured a series-regular role in an American primetime drama (Screen Rant).

Turned Down Roles

The pattern of passing on certain roles in favor of better opportunities appears consistent across Cooke’s career. Rather than taking whatever was immediately available, she chose projects that built toward her eventual casting in Bates Motel and later Ready Player One. TV Guide’s complete credit list shows her career has been marked by deliberate genre-switching — from horror (The Quiet Ones, Ouija) to prestige drama (Vanity Fair) to blockbuster spectacle (Ready Player One) (TV Guide).

“Cooke’s ability to nail a prominent role in the early stages of her career is impressive.”

— Collider (film review publication)

Olivia Cooke Movies and Shows

Across her career, Cooke has accumulated credits in horror, drama, thriller, comedy, and fantasy — often choosing films that sit at genre boundaries rather than firmly within them.

Apple TV List

Apple TV+ carries Slow Horses (2022–present), where Cooke appears as Sid Baker, a MI5 agent working under Gary Oldman’s gruff supervision in a spy thriller series that has built a loyal audience over its first three seasons. The show holds a 7.7 IMDb rating and has earned critical praise for its writing and ensemble work (Screen Rant). This role marks one of her few recurring television appearances since Bates Motel ended.

TV Guide Credits

Beyond the headline projects, Cooke’s credits list spans shorter appearances. TV Guide shows she appeared in Modern Love (the Amazon Prime anthology series) and Axe Cop (an animated FX comedy) (TV Guide). These smaller roles offer glimpses of her range across formats, from prestige anthology pieces to absurdist animated comedy.

Recent Projects

Following the House of the Dragon role, Cooke starred in The Good Mother (2023), a psychological thriller that landed poorly with critics (22% on Rotten Tomatoes) (Rotten Tomatoes). Looking forward, TV Guide lists The Girlfriend (2025) as an upcoming project currently in post-production, with details still emerging (TV Guide). The gap between her critical successes and this recent misfire underscores how even accomplished actors can stumble when the material doesn’t match their strengths.

Related reading: Cast of Warfare (Film): Actors, Roles & Real-Life Ties

Olivia Cooke’s rise from Bates Motel newcomer to House of the Dragon queen, as traced in this full roles retrospective, reveals her versatile early career highlights.

Frequently asked questions

“Cooke’s versatility makes her one of the most in-demand actresses in the world.”

— Screen Rant (entertainment news outlet)

Related reading

• Screen Rant: House of the Dragon Olivia Cooke Best Movies TV Shows
• Rotten Tomatoes: Olivia Cooke Profile
• Collider: Olivia Cooke Movies and TV Shows Best Ranked
• TV Guide: Olivia Cooke Credits

For fans who want to track Cooke’s trajectory, the pattern is clear: she’s chosen projects with increasing scale and ambition, moving from British television to Sundance indies to Spielberg blockbusters to HBO tentpoles over roughly a decade. The range is unusual — most actors find a lane and stay there. Cooke’s lane has been “whatever challenges her next.”