When people talk about Anna Gunn, the conversation almost always starts with three words:
Breaking Bad’s Skyler. But boiling her career down to one stressed-out wife folding a mountain of
cash on a storage unit floor seriously undersells what she has done on stage, on television, and in film.
In this deep dive into Anna Gunn rankings and opinions, we’ll look at how critics and fans rate her work,
which performances genuinely stand out, and why Skyler White went from “TV’s most hated wife” to a
modern antiheroine icon.

Meet Anna Gunn: More Than “Walter White’s Wife”

Anna Gunn is an American actress born in 1968 who grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico and studied theater at
Northwestern University before spending time at the British American Drama Academy in London. That combo
of serious training plus character-driven roles set her up to become one of TV’s most quietly powerful
performers. Over the years she has moved between network legal dramas, prestige cable westerns, dark
crime sagas, independent films, and even video game voice work, building the kind of résumé that makes
casting directors very happy and casual viewers say, “Wait, I know her from somewhere…”

From Guest Spots to Awards Season

Long before she was laundering cartel money in New Mexico, Gunn did the classic working-actor grind:
guest roles on shows like Quantum Leap, a memorable appearance on Seinfeld, and early
parts in crime and legal dramas. She broke through with recurring roles such as Assistant District
Attorney Jean Ward on The Practice and Martha Bullock on HBO’s Deadwood, the latter
earning her serious critical respect for bringing warmth and steel to a character who could have been
overshadowed by that show’s louder personalities.

Add in film work like Enemy of the State, Red State, Equity, Sully,
and the sequel Deadwood: The Movie, plus voice acting as Ariel in the cult favorite
Legacy of Kain video game series, and you start to see why lists of the best Anna Gunn movies
and TV shows keep getting longer every year.

Why Skyler White Dominates Every Anna Gunn Ranking

Critical Acclaim and Awards

Of all Anna Gunn performances, Skyler White in Breaking Bad sits at the top of
almost every rankingfor good reasons. As Walter White’s increasingly suspicious, morally cornered wife,
Gunn had to track one of the most complicated emotional arcs on television: from concerned spouse to
terrified witness, reluctant accomplice, and finally bitter survivor.

Awards bodies noticed. Gunn was nominated three times for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding
Supporting Actress in a Drama Series and won twice, in 2013 and 2014, for her work on
Breaking Bad. She also shared in Screen Actors Guild recognition for the show’s ensemble cast.
It’s rare for a character who spends so much time doing “domestic” thingscooking dinner, caring for
kids, managing family financesto be treated as one of the core engines of a prestige drama, but Gunn
made Skyler impossible to ignore.

The Backlash And the Reappraisal

Of course, you can’t talk about Anna Gunn rankings and opinions without mentioning the intense backlash
Skyler received during the show’s original run. Online comments and social media posts went after the
character as “nagging,” “shrill,” and worse, revealing a pretty ugly double standard. Walter was praised
for “breaking bad,” while Skyler was criticized for objecting to, you know, the whole crime thing.

Gunn famously addressed that reaction in a widely discussed op-ed, pointing out how Skyler became a sort
of Rorschach test for viewers’ attitudes toward women who say “no” to male self-destruction. Over time,
rewatch culture and streaming have changed the conversation. These days, fan threads and rankings are far
more likely to praise Gunn’s performance, apologizing (sometimes publicly) for earlier Skyler hate and
calling her one of the show’s most tragic, understandable, and human characters.

Ranking Anna Gunn’s Standout Performances

So how do critics, fan polls, and rating sites actually rank her work? While every list is a little
different, certain roles keep rising to the top. Below is a blended ranking that pulls from fan-voted
lists, critic roundups, and rating aggregates, combined with a bit of editorial opinion for flavor.

1. 1. Skyler White – Breaking Bad (2008–2013)

   No surprise here: virtually every “best Anna Gunn performance” list puts Skyler White in first place.
   Across five seasons, Gunn had to match Bryan Cranston’s increasingly unhinged Walter beat for beat,
   selling both the mundane frustrations of a struggling middle-class marriage and the high-stakes panic
   of discovering your partner is a drug kingpin. Her scenesconfronting Walt at the pool party, calmly
   telling him “I’m waiting for the cancer to come back,” or breaking down on the phone as she protects
   him in the finaleare routinely cited as some of the show’s most devastating moments.

   In fan forums and rankings, Skyler has gone from “least favorite character” to “secret MVP” for
   viewers who rewatch the series with fresh eyes. That turnaround alone is a testament to how layered
   Gunn’s work really is.

2. 2. Martha Bullock – Deadwood & Deadwood: The Movie

   In HBO’s Deadwood, Gunn plays Martha Bullock, a schoolteacher and the wife of Sheriff Seth
   Bullock. Surrounded by swaggering gunslingers and volcanic swear-filled monologues, she brings a
   quiet moral gravity to the lawless town. Critics often single out her work in this role as a
   masterclass in subtlety: small shifts in posture, tone, and expression reflect a woman trying to
   build a civilized life in a place that is anything but.

   When the long-awaited Deadwood: The Movie finally arrived, Gunn’s return was one of its
   emotional anchors, and the film’s high critical scores helped push her Deadwood work even higher in
   recent rankings.

3. 3. Jean Ward – The Practice

   Before prestige cable turned her into a household name for TV obsessives, Gunn had a steady run on
   the ABC legal drama The Practice as Assistant District Attorney Jean Ward. It’s not as flashy
   as her later work, but it’s a fascinating early look at the traits that would define her career:
   precise line delivery, emotional restraint, and the ability to project both authority and vulnerability
   at the same time.

   For fans who love to trace an actor’s evolution, revisiting these episodes is like finding a blueprint
   for Skyler White and Martha Bullock years before they existed.

4. 4. Detective Ellie Miller – Gracepoint

   In Gracepoint, the American adaptation of the British crime drama Broadchurch, Gunn
   takes on the role of Detective Ellie Miller, a small-town cop whose world is shattered by the murder
   of a local boy. Stepping into a part already beloved in the original version was a tall order, but
   Gunn brought her own spin: less brittle, more quietly wounded, with a strong sense of community and
   family.

   Rankings of her best TV roles usually put Gracepoint in the middle of the pack, but many
   critics argue that her work here is underratedespecially in the final episodes, when detective and
   mother collide in gut-punch fashion.

5. 5. Naomi Bishop – Equity

   If you only know Anna Gunn from television, Equity is the movie to cue up next. She stars as
   Naomi Bishop, an investment banker navigating glass ceilings, corrupt colleagues, and a high-stakes
   tech IPO. It’s one of the rare projects that finally put her at the absolute center of the story, and
   she makes full use of the opportunity, playing Naomi as brilliant, ambitious, and morally complicated
   without slipping into cliché.

   In lists that combine film and TV, Equity often shows up just behind Breaking Bad
   and Deadwood, and many critics have called for her to get more leading roles with this level
   of nuance.

6. 6. Elizabeth Davis – Sully

   Clint Eastwood’s Sully packs in a strong supporting cast to surround Tom Hanks, and Gunn’s
   role as Elizabeth Davis helps ground the film’s portrayal of the investigation that followed the
   “Miracle on the Hudson.” She’s not the focus of the story, but she makes every scene count, bringing
   a mix of professionalism and human concern that keeps the procedural sections from feeling dry.

7. 7. Voice of Ariel – Legacy of Kain (Video Game Series)

   For gamers, Anna Gunn will always be Ariel, the spectral guardian in the Legacy of Kain
   series. Voice acting requires a different toolkitno facial expressions, no physical presenceand Gunn
   leans into it with a performance that’s eerie, sorrowful, and oddly soothing. Online rankings that
   include her voice work usually give this role a special shout-out, especially among fans who grew up
   on the games.

8. 8. Guest Roles on Prestige and Network Dramas

   From Six Feet Under to NYPD Blue, Shades of Blue, and Law & Order,
   Gunn has appeared in many series where she had only one or a handful of episodes to make an impact.
   These roles don’t always top the formal rankings, but longtime TV watchers often bring them up in
   comment sections and fan polls as proof that she can drop into any worldfrom family drama to cop
   showand immediately feel like she belongs there.

9. 9. Indie and Festival Films

   Titles like Red State, Little Red Wagon, and Being Frank don’t dominate
   mainstream lists, but they show another side of Anna Gunn’s career: a willingness to back smaller,
   stranger projects. Among indie film fans, she’s often praised as one of those actors who can lift a
   movie’s overall quality just by showing up and committing fully, even when the budget clearly did not.

10. 10. Early-Career Appearances and Cult Favorites

    Finally, there are the early or more obscure appearances that still earn fond mentions: the
    Seinfeld episode “The Glasses,” her turn in Murder One, small roles in 1990s thrillers,
    and the occasional TV movie. These spots rarely crack Top 10 lists on their own, but collectively they
    tell the story of an actor who has quietly been everywhere, slowly climbing toward the kind of roles
    that would eventually win her Emmys.

How Critics and Fans See Anna Gunn Today

Ranking sites and fan-voted lists tend to agree on a few core points about Anna Gunn. First, her very
best work is concentrated in televisionparticularly Breaking Bad and Deadwood. Those
shows almost always occupy the top spots, no matter who is doing the ranking. Second, her filmography is
full of strong supporting turns that critics respect, even if they don’t always grab mainstream headlines.

Third, there’s a noticeable shift over time in how people talk about her. Early Internet commentary
around Skyler White was hostile; newer opinion pieces and fan discussions are far more likely to praise
her for portraying the emotional cost of Walter’s choices. Rewatch articles, podcasts, and online
rankings now frequently argue that the show simply wouldn’t work without Gunn grounding it in domestic
reality.

Recent appearancesincluding reprising a Skyler-like persona in a tongue-in-cheek commercialhave
reminded viewers just how much presence she still commands. When she shows up, even for a short spot,
audiences immediately recognize that sharp mix of intelligence, tension, and humor that defined her best
roles.

Our Opinion: Why Anna Gunn Deserves Even Higher Rankings

If anything, many Anna Gunn rankings are still too conservative. Because she’s not a loud, showy
performer, it’s easy to underestimate just how difficult her roles are. She specializes in emotional
middle spaces: characters who are exhausted but still fighting, frightened but still principled, angry
but still deeply in love with the people who are causing them pain.

Her performances also reward rewatching. On a second or third viewing of Breaking Bad, you start
noticing tiny details: the way Skyler changes her voice when she’s lying to protect her family, the way
she moves around a room when Walt is dangerous versus when he’s vulnerable, the silent beats where she’s
clearly doing moral calculus in her head. The same is true in Deadwood, where small glances and
pauses speak volumes about the risks Martha is taking by bringing education and structure into a violent
frontier town.

In other words, Anna Gunn is one of those actors whose work quietly becomes the emotional spine of the
stories she’s in. Rankings already put her highbut as more people revisit her shows in the streaming
era, expect the “best of” lists and fan opinions to slide her a few notches higher.

Experiences: Living With Anna Gunn’s Characters (500-Word Deep Dive)

Think back to the first time you watched Breaking Bad. For many viewers, the early seasons felt
like a wild ride with Walter and Jesse, while Skyler seemed to be the person always “getting in the way”
of the fun. Then, years later, you rewatch itmaybe because a friend is seeing it for the first time, or
because the series drops again on a major streaming platformand your experience is completely different.

Suddenly, you notice how early Anna Gunn starts signaling that something is wrong. A slightly too-long
stare at Walt’s face when he lies. The way her shoulders tense when finances come up. The way her voice
shifts when she’s trying to stay calm for the kids. On a rewatch, Skyler doesn’t feel like a roadblock;
she feels like the only adult in the room who understands the scale of the disaster heading toward the
family.

This is a common experience you’ll see in online discussions of Anna Gunn rankings and opinions: people
openly admitting that they misjudged Skyler the first time around. Many say things like, “I used to hate
her, but now she’s my favorite character,” or “As a teenager I sided with Walt; as an adult I side with
Skyler.” Those shifts aren’t just about viewers getting olderthey’re about how effectively Gunn plays the
long game with her performance.

Something similar happens with Deadwood. On a first watch, you might be more focused on Al
Swearengen’s Shakespearean profanity or the show’s brutal violence. But on a second pass, Martha Bullock
becomes more interesting. You see the courage it takes for her to insist on schooling and structure in a
place that barely has functioning law. You notice the tenderness and frustration built into her marriage.
You start to realize that Anna Gunn’s characters are often the ones building something durable in
settings obsessed with destruction.

Even in smaller roles, the experience of seeing her name in the opening credits changes how you watch.
Maybe you’re halfway through a movie like Sully, and you spot her in a supporting part. Suddenly
you sit up a little straighter. You know that whenever she appears, the scenes will have a slightly
different energymore grounded, more emotionally specific, less generic. It’s the sort of trust that only
comes from seeing an actor deliver, over and over again, in wildly different projects.

Fans of her video game work describe something similar. Hearing her voice as Ariel in Legacy of
Kain adds an extra layer to the story; knowing it’s the same actor who played Skyler White creates a
weird but satisfying connection between entirely different fictional universes. It’s one of those quiet
pleasures of being a media fan todayrecognizing a voice or face and realizing you’ve been following that
performer’s career for years without fully noticing.

These layered viewing experiences explain why Anna Gunn’s reputation keeps rising. As more people rewatch
older shows, discover her indie films, or encounter her again in new projects, they bring a history of
emotional responses with them. That history shapes rankings and opinions in ways that raw statistics
can’t fully capture. Ratings, awards, and fan votes matterbut so does that subtle jolt of recognition
when you see her name in the credits and think, “Oh, this is going to be good.”

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