12 Best James Marsden Movies & TV Shows, Ranked

All at once a prince and a criminal, there are few roles James Marsden isn’t perfect for. The charming everyman has dazzled audiences for over three decades and in over 80 film and television projects, ranging broadly in genre from experimental comedies and dark satires to indie science fiction stories and comic book blockbusters.

As of writing, Marsden’s biggest contemporary projects are the films in the “Sonic the Hedgehog” franchise, in which he plays one of few human characters alongside Jim Carrey, opposite the voices of Ben Schwartz, Idris Elba, and, most recently, Keanu Reeves as Shadow the Hedgehog. But before he was chasing gold rings across dimensions, Marsden was already an unmissable star of screens big and small, so we’ve ranked his 12 best TV shows and movies, taking into account their overall quality, how they showcased his talent, and their impact on popular culture at large.

While James Marsden is now widely known as an actor who can handle comedy and drama in equal measure, he didn’t always feel that was a given. When he was cast in the Adam McKay sequel “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues,” it was only because Will Ferrell happened to have seen him in 2008’s “Sex Drive” (despite containing some great work from Marsden, it’s a fairly draining watch otherwise), and felt he could go toe-to-toe with his character, legendary newsman Ron Burgundy.

Marsden took on the role of Jack “Lame” Lime, an arrogant hotshot anchor whom the actor compared to Tom Brokaw with regard to his standing in the “Anchorman” world. He recalls getting to surprise people — such as Jonah Hill and Seth Rogen — at the initial table read by getting huge laughs on his lines. “It was a surprise that ‘Marsden is funny,’ was sort of the general feeling,” he recalled in a retrospective interview with Vanity Fair. Marsden is indeed funny in the final cut of the film as well, delivering possibly his wildest comedic performance to date.

Despite courting cancellation through the majority of its run, Tina Fey’s groundbreaking NBC sitcom “30 Rock” remains one of the most beloved television shows ever produced. Satirizing Fey as the dysfunctional head writer of a “Saturday Night Live”-style variety show, it often juxtaposed her fast-paced career with her banal personal life. The latter included a string of well-intentioned but ill-fitting romantic partners, including James Marsden’s Criss Chros in Season 6.

As he reflected with Vanity Fair in 2020, “There was a time period where people like Matt Damon and Jon Hamm … were showing up and being boyfriends to Liz Lemon [Fey] and I thought, ‘Yeah, good company to keep.'” Expecting only to be a seasonal guest star, Marsden was shocked when he was not only asked to return but also was pitched a storyline in which Liz and Criss would marry. He enthusiastically accepted the offer. “It was, I think, the first time in my career that I was [working with] the major league players of comedy,” he said.

In 2012, the same year James Marsden took on roles in comedies like “Small Apartments” and the Rebel Wilson-led “Bachelorette,” the actor also featured in a little-known but grossly underrated sci-fi movie called “Robot & Frank.” The film takes place in 2022, a once near-future that compelled Marsden. “It’s not like a very slick, futuristic movie,” he told Vanity Fair. “There’s a few new cars and a [few] technological advancements, but … We live in a world where, 10 years in the future, robots are installed in homes as caretakers for the elderly.”

Frank Langella stars as one such elderly person, an aging and agitating ex-con also named Frank. When Frank’s bitter attitude and symptoms of dementia alienate him from his only son Hunter (Marsden), Hunter gifts him the robot as a means of creating distance. Realizing that the robot lacks the moral code his other companions have, Frank thus endeavors to turn the machine into his new partner in crime.

Having been a fan of director Lee Daniels’ since his directorial debut (2005’s “Shadowboxer”), James Marsden was ecstatic when he was invited to audition for a role in his 2013 historical drama “The Butler.” This feeling mounted when Marsden learned how many Academy Award-winning or nominated actors were involved already, and that he was being considered to play U.S. President John F. Kennedy. The star-studded ensemble feature centers around Forest Whitaker’s Cecil Gaines, a butler who worked in the White House throughout five presidential administrations including Kennedy’s, and often had to contend with the political, social, and moral ramifications of his proximity to their power.

Marsden felt a “responsibility to history” (as he said in a behind-the-scenes interview) to justly portray the martyred leader. Though he donned prosthetic makeup and adopted Kennedy’s Boston accent through rigorous study, his primary goal was to portray him with as much humanity as possible. As a result, Marsden turns in one of his best performances to date in “The Butler,” despite having relatively little screen time compared to other projects featured higher on this list.

A defining romantic comedy of the early 2000s, “The Notebook” is an imperfect but effective film that had a lasting and indelible impact on the genre. While Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams star as Noah and Allie, the star-crossed lovers of the Nicholas Sparks adaptation, James Marsden plays Lon Hammond Jr. — a wealthy lawyer whom Allie must, of course, abandon by the end of the film for her true love. This marks the most popular example of a stock character Marsden often finds himself playing: the guy before “the one.”

In this case, specifically, this role led to unexpected consequences for Marsden, as the film’s audience grew much larger than he anticipated. “Nobody knew that it was gonna be such a massive hit, you know? You never know when you’re filming,” he told Good Morning America in 2020. “You hope that it’s gonna happen, but [for “The Notebook”], I don’t think anyone saw [that] coming.” Though he must occasionally weather a passionate fan or two, he also said many men approach him to share that it’s their favorite film of his. “It’s a pretty special thing to be a part of.” If you’ve yet to experience this classic story, you can currently watch “The Notebook” on streaming.

John Waters’ “Hairspray” is still a relevant story 35 years after it was released. It’s been turned into a highly successful Broadway musical, been revived as a live project starring Ariana Grande, and was updated as a modern movie musical in 2007. In the latter form — an equal parts hilarious and heartwarming comedy with no shortage of infectious tunes to sing and dance to — James Marsden plays Corny Collins, the charming host of a teen variety program that propels much of the plot. (As a teen, Marsden got his start performing in school musicals such as “Bye Bye Birdie” and “Good News.”)

The conflict at the story’s heart is racial segregation in the 1960s, as Collin’s show only allows Black dancers to be featured on an isolated day of programming. Speaking to The Oklahoman (an outlet from the actor’s native state), Marsden expressed that “Hairspray” shared similar themes to another popular project he was involved with — “X-Men.” “It’s the outcasts, the people who are different, who become the heroes,” he said. “Instead of retractable claws and laser beams, it’s the Twist and the Mashed Potato — singing and dancing.”

“27 Dresses” may not be the most profound film (when the romantic comedy was released in 2007, we described it as merely “a treat of light fun”), but it accomplishes exactly what it intends within the genre and has maintained a legacy as one of the best wedding movies ever made. It also sees James Marsden playing somewhat against type, finally as the romantic lead rather than the obstacle. “[In ’27 Dresses’], everyone will expect that I do not get [the girl],” he joked to Cinema.com at the time, “because historically, that is what happens to all my characters, I have all the bad luck.”

In the film, Marsden stars opposite Katherine Heigl as Kevin Doyle, a newspaper columnist who secretly plots to make a serial bridesmaid (Heigl) the subject of an ambitious but derisive lifestyle piece about the frivolity of weddings. Even if your mind can probably trace exactly where the plot is headed from there, Marsden and Heigl are stellar in an amusing-enough script aimed at the rom-com faithful.

Polarizing as the series may have become as it progressed, there’s no denying that the first season of “Westworld” ranks among the best work HBO has ever done. Adapting both the book and film of the same name by influential sci-fi writer Michael Crichton, the show depicts a future in which an uncanny Wild West-themed amusement park is patronized by wealthy guests and populated by lifelike animatronics with artificial intelligence that (at the very least) borders on genuine sentience. James Marsden plays one of these robotic hosts — the dashing cowboy Teddy. Within the park, his role is clearly that of the romantic hero. Once his scripted love interest, Delores (Evan Rachel Wood), breaches the boundaries of the park to ignite a revolution, his role in the world becomes much more complicated — ultimately leading to an epic but fatal storyline that takes place during Season 2.

According to Marsden, showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy already had a four-season arc planned for Teddy before they shot a single scene of Season 2. At the same time they said he would be departing the show at the season’s end, they told him exactly when he’d return. This surely made it all the more disappointing when “Westworld” was suddenly canceled after its fourth season, a turn of events that Marsden spoke about publicly. “I’m never going to speak without gratitude about any of my experiences, but it would have been nice to be able to complete the story we wanted to finish,” he shared. 

Marsden’s performance on the show is nevertheless impressive, especially knowing he was trying to avoid television before he signed on. This leap of faith may not have led to the full story he hoped for, but it seemingly opened the door to a series of successful TV projects that shaped this chapter of his career.

Despite being temporarily dead to “Westworld,” James Marsden was far from dead to the world of prestige TV. In 2019, he was cast in the first season of Netflix’s buzzy black comedy series “Dead to Me,” in which he played bad guy Steve Woods. Steve is quickly revealed to be partially responsible for the deadly hit-and-run that throws the show into action, sparking a volatile friendship between his wife, Judy (Linda Cardellini), and Jen (Christina Applegate), the wife of the accident victim.

Massive spoiler alert for the end of the first season — Marsden’s tenure on the show was originally supposed to end with Steve’s sudden and shocking death in the finale. As powerful of a moment as it is in the series, the twist did leave the actor feeling slightly disappointed that he wouldn’t get to return for future seasons. That was when creator and showrunner Liz Feldman came to him with an unusual idea: Twins.

In Seasons 2 and 3, Marsden returns as Steve’s twin brother Ben. This is an appropriately soap-opera-style twist that — in addition to keeping Marsden on the call sheet — increases the tension brought about by Jen and Judy’s web of deception dramatically. He and Feldman both felt that the key to keeping this twist from breaking the show was to lean only slightly into the melodrama while otherwise continuing to play stakes as direly as he always had been. This mindset carried into the third season as well, especially in Ben’s more ridiculously tragic moments. “It was important to me that when he’s stumbling around … that can’t feel silly,” he told Gold Derby. “It’s got to feel like this guy is falling apart.”

It’s fitting that James Marsden’s unexpected career detour into some of the greatest television shows of the last decade resulted with the actor receiving his first Golden Globe and Emmy Award nominations — though we’re not sure anyone expected it’d be because of a show like “Jury Duty.” The 2023 series is the underdog story of underdog stories, a genre-mashup of the traditional, scripted workplace sitcom and reality courtroom TV (part of the same bizarre crypto-reality subgenre of comedy that was pioneered by the dubiously ethical “Joe Schmo Show” on MTV and persists to this day largely through the work of Nathan Fielder). Ronald Gladden, an affable everyman who has no idea he’s on a TV show, is called in to serve on a “jury” alongside several strangers who are, in fact, actors playing characters. This includes the very recognizable James Marsden, who plays a caricature of himself.

Though Marsden may have appeared as something of a big fish in a small pond working on the series (which was dumped on Amazon’s oft-neglected FAST streamer Freevee), the actor was both exhilarated and terrified by the challenge this unusual format presented. “You get one take,” Marsden explained to The Hollywood Reporter. “If [Gladden] sees a hidden camera, or someone calls somebody by the wrong name, the whole thing is upended. That was really exciting to me, just from the perspective of [wondering], ‘Can we pull this off?'” And pull it off they did — “Jury Duty” was undoubtedly the biggest sleeper hit of the year, as well as one of our favorite shows of 2023 overall.

It was difficult for us to decide which of the original “X-Men” films we should include on this list. Though some may disagree with our choice (and, really, it’s splitting hairs between the first two anyway), we feel the 2003 sequel “X2: X-Men United” takes everything great about the first entry and dials up the heat in terms of emotion, spectacle, and thematic complexity. James Marsden stars in the trilogy as Scott Summers — aka Cyclops, the leader of the titular mutant superhero team who has the ability to fire concussive blasts through his iconic visor. This costume piece was apparently difficult for him to work with as an actor, given how it removes his eyes from the performance in every scene. He told CBR at the time, “If I believe in the dialogue I’m just going to [act] like I didn’t have these glasses on and cross my fingers and hope that [the emotion is] conveyed.”

“X2” was a repeat success for Fox’s then-nascent Marvel endeavors, earning praise from critics and fans while raking in over $407 million worldwide. It also made Marsden a hot actor for superhero projects, so much so that he almost had to choose between shooting the ill-fated finale “X-Men: The Last Stand” and the DC Comics legacy sequel “Superman Returns.” In the decades since he took his final bow as Cyclops, Marsden’s career has branched into many interesting and seemingly rewarding directions — but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t miss his crime-fighting days. After several Fox “X-Men” made their return in 2024’s “Deadpool and Wolverine,” Marsden implied he was open to returning in an interview with Screen Rant. “I look back on that experience with such affection and reverence for all of it, and I loved playing that character,” he said. “It was one of the highlights of my career.”

Fifteen years after it cast a classic Disney spell on audiences, “Enchanted” is still a magically effective musical romantic comedy the likes of which we’ve yet to see again. Amy Adams plays Giselle, an archetypal lovesick princess who is banished from the (animated) fairytale kingdom of Andalasia to the rough, very real streets of New York City — where, of course, she unexpectedly finds the handsome divorce attorney Robert (Patrick Dempsey). Before that can happen, however, Giselle must reckon with her feelings for her prince Edward (James Marsden), who has chased her across dimensions dreaming of a true love’s kiss. “I always describe [Edward] as not necessarily being in love with Giselle, but being in love with being in love,” Marsden shared with Cinema.com.

“Enchanted” was a decisive critical and commercial hit (though some of us are still a little bitter Adams didn’t receive a nod for Best Actress). The buzz had fans understandably clamoring for a sequel — but five years after the premiere, Marsden was still in the dark and doubtful. “You know, we are playing animated characters that don’t age,” he warned Vanity Fair in 2012. “So that’s maybe a problem.” It ultimately took Disney until 2020 to greenlight the sequel project, which eventually became the surprisingly enjoyable Disney+ feature “Disenchanted.”

Marsden expressed his gratitude upon its release not only for getting to return as Edward, but also for having been offered the role back in 2007. He credits the opportunity to show audiences a new side of himself after “X-Men” with his unexpected professional longevity. “I’ve been lucky to have had a career for almost 30 years now in this business,” he told Nerds of Color, “and you go back to 1993 [and ask yourself], would you still be working in 2023? I’d probably say, ‘Maybe not, but if I get a couple of years out of it, that’s great.'”