Daisy Edgar-Jones is incredibly lucky to get to work alongside the internet’s boyfriends, like Paul Mescal, Andrew Garfield and Glen Powell. But another standout of the British actress’ career is getting to receive top billing in her recent projects, like the 2025 movie release On Swift Horses. The leading lady had no trouble talking about the type of roles she wants, which tied in with mentioning the infamous deleted kiss scene from Twisters.
Throughout film history, it’s been a common trend for men to lead big movies while women support the male characters. Fortunately, actresses like Daisy Edgar-Jones have shown that times have changed. While the Golden Globe nominee first gained recognition starring alongside Paul Mescal, she has since been the lead in her new projects. In her interview with Elle, Edgar-Jones got real about the type of roles she’s aiming for, and I hope her wish continues to come true:
It’s great that more and more stories are being made with women front and center. It’s also an interesting thing, being a woman in your 20s, wanting to find characters who are not always ingenues. You want to find characters with agency. I want every character I play to be complicated and deep and have layers to them, because that’s what it is to be human.
So far, many of Daisy Edgar-Jones’ characters have had “agency” with real complexities to them. In the horror-thriller Fresh, Edgar-Jones received top billing as Nora, who starts off as a vulnerable victim to her sinister date to emerge as a strategic survivor. Another lead role of hers was as the abandoned yet willful Kya in the book adaptation of Where the Crawdads Sing, which became a box office success.
And we can’t leave out the box office storm of Twisters, where Edgar-Jones played a storm chaser dealing with the grief of losing her friends to a tornado only to face her fears when a new cyclone hits Oklahoma. The talented actress has proven in each role that she has a commanding presence that can hold a movie effectively.
While it’s amazing to see Daisy Edgar-Jones take on the lead in movies, there was one thing that bothered fans about one of her recent movies. In the ending of Twisters, the expected kiss scene between Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell ultimately got cut. The Emmy nominee told Elle she was well aware of the anger from fans about the deleted scene, and here was her take:
I feel lucky that a lot of the characters I’ve played have had that. They aren’t defined by their actions or their experiences, or by the men in their life. Like with Kate in Twisters, I know there was a big uproar that there wasn’t a kiss at the end. But she went on a journey in that film that was bigger than a romantic journey.
I agree with Daisy Edgar-Jones. Sure, I would have loved to see her and Glen Powell liplock since the movie truly built up their romance. At the same time, the movie’s ending that they stuck with worked to show that her character got recognized for saving the day and will continue storm chasing. It truly was more important seeing her character’s journey of overcoming her trauma and chasing storms compared to chasing a guy, relating to Edgar-Jones’ character wishes in the first place.
In the upcoming LGBTQ+ movie On Swift Horses, Daisy Edgar-Jones takes channeling complexity to another level. Continuing her top-billing streak, she plays a 1950s housewife, Muriel, who has an affair with her female neighbor in her efforts to chase adventure. It looks like we’ll get to see Muriel’s inner struggle between societal expectations and going after what she truly wants.
Daisy Edgar-Jones looks like she’s headed towards a smart path in her career, going after roles that highlight her strength compared to the leading men she stars with. While Twisters didn’t get the kiss scene many were hoping for, we learn at the end of the day that Kate’s journey as a storm chaser is more important than a steamy romance ending. You can continue to see her channel complexity in On Swift Horses in theaters on April 25th.