CURIOSITYAmanda Seyfried’s Career-Best Role Made $4 Million While Nobody Was Watching3 min read
Two Films, One Brutal December
Amanda Seyfried closed out 2025 with two starring roles in two very different films. One was a glossy, sexy Lionsgate thriller based on a beach-read phenomenon. The other was a sweeping 18th-century folk epic shot partly on 70mm and built around one of the most demanding performances she has ever given. Guess which one anyone talked about.
The Housemaid cleaned up at the box office. The Testament of Ann Lee, directed by Mona Fastvold, earned roughly $4 million in its entire worldwide theatrical run. On its opening day alone, The Housemaid pulled in twice that figure. Seyfried was everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
Who Was Ann Lee
Fastvold — the Oscar-nominated co-writer of The Brutalist and the filmmaker behind the quiet 2020 romance The World to Come — built The Testament of Ann Lee around the real founding leader of the Shakers, the religious sect that shaped early American spiritual life. The film is set in the 1700s, crammed with period detail, and anchored by a series of large-scale choreographed musical sequences that have no business being as electric as they are.
The scope is audacious. The ambition is almost reckless. It’s the kind of film that announces itself as something rare in the first ten minutes and then keeps making good on that promise. Critics caught it. General audiences, distracted by Sydney Sweeney and a twisty poolside thriller, mostly did not.
