Alexis Bledel Movies and TV Shows: From Gilmore Girls to The Handmaid’s Tale

Emmy-Award winning actress Alexis Bledel is widely recognized for her role as Rory Gilmore on Gilmore Girls. But what audiences may not know is there are dozens of other amazing Alexis Bledel movies and TV shows that you may remember the actress from.

Bledel’s shy and awkward character on the series is not too far off from the real-life actress. Bledel herself is a very private and shy person herself, so much so that her parents encouraged her to start in theater in order to overcome her shyness. While getting on stage may have helped, her modest personality has been showcased in many of her roles.

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Bledel has been in the spotlight since she was a young girl, starting in her community theater at age 8. She performed in productions of Our Town, The Wizard of Oz and Aladdin. Soon after, Bledel moved into modeling, which she continued with until college, when she attended New York University as a film major.

She quickly landed the role of Rory in 2000, making the hit series her first project, staying with it for the full seven seasons until it ended in 2007. But the part wasn’t as easy to snag as fans would think: Bledel had to audition a total of six times for the part. She explained on Late Night With Seth Meyers, “I was a student at NYU, and they kept calling me back up to audition. Oddly, I wasn’t a very seasoned actor at all. I didn’t know the process… I had a little attitude, and our boss really liked that a lot.”

Early Career: Alexis Bledel movies and TV shows

While portraying her studious, introverted character on the Warner Bros. lot, Bledel continued to book other roles. In 2002, she scored the part of Winnie Foster in Tuck Everlasting, which opened the actress up to the world of film. Winnie Foster, eager to break out into the real world, meets Jesse Tuck and starts to fall for the boy, unaware that he is from a family of immortals.

Bledel then got the action movie Sin City (2005), alongside Bruce Willis, Clive Owen and Jessica Alba. Later that year, the actress starred in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2005) as Lena. Bledel, once again, portrayed a shy, reserved character among her more outgoing and outspoken friends. Acting alongside Blake Lively, America Ferrera and Amber Tamblyn, the film was a success.

While talking about the film, Bledel explained why it has been so well received, especially by teenage girls who might relate to the story. She said, “I think the friendship between the four girls is something that is more realistic than a lot of the relationships we see between girls in movies lately. A lot of the time it's like backstabbing or petty or superficial. I think most girls' relationships are real friendships like these.”

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Soon after, Bledel starred in I’m Reed Fish (2006) and had an uncredited role in Zoom (2006). Gilmore Girls came to an end a year later, disappointing fans but leading to more major projects for the actress.

Alexis Bledel movies and TV shows after Gilmore Girls

In 2008, the actress starred in the sequel, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, which featured the same main cast as the original. Bledel was very busy in 2009 as she booked one episode of ER as Dr. Julia Wise, followed by two movies, which were released back-to-back.

Bledel starred in an all-too-relatable comedy movie, Post Grad (2009). In it, she plays Ryden Malby, who graduates college and has to move back in with her eccentric family, while also trying to find a job (and a clue). Starring Michael Keaton, Carol Burnett, Jane Lynch and Zach Gilford, the movie is an enjoyable watch.

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In The Good Guy (2009), Bledel plays a woman stuck between two men — the man she loves and a good guy. The actress, whose character, Beth, is caught trying to decide which guy would better fulfill her life, says that maybe she just wasn’t sure what she wanted. Bledel offered, “In Beth's mind, maybe her ideal man is an anchor and gives her life some stability. Maybe in a different kind of relationship, she might discover that she could have more in her life.”

In 2010, Bledel starred in The Conspirator, a film about a female co-conspirator in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. The same year she was featured in The Kate Logan Affair (2010), followed by Girl Walks Into a Bar (2011) and Violet and Daisy (2011).

Bledel’s later career

In 2012, Bledel booked a small arc in the series Mad Men as Beth Dawes. The actress then starred in three films: The Brass Teapot (2012), Remember Sunday (2013) and Parts Per Billion (2014). After that, she went back to television, starring in the Fox series, Us & Them (2014), but the show was canceled before it ever aired on TV. This was followed by the Katherine Heigl film Jenny’s Wedding (2015) and Emily & Tim (2015).

Finally, Stars Hollow fans got a reboot of their favorite show with Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. The mini-series consisted of four episodes on Netflix, with each one following a season of the year. All of the original cast returned for the series, which had ended on a major cliffhanger.

Bledel discussed the revival and how she and Lauren Graham’s characters have changed since the series finale in 2007, almost ten years prior. She explained, “It’s like a chance to have a do-over. You never really get that in life. To get to reimagine the same character eight years later, it’s kind of great, creatively. You get to take all the things that you find interesting about the character and then hopefully inject that with whatever you picked up along the way personally.”

Lucky for audiences, that is exactly what the revival delivered: the same characters everyone knows and loves, but grown up. Though Lorelai repeats similar patterns from her earlier life, she and all of the other characters end up in a lovely place.

Alexis Bledel's recent work

After Gilmore Girls officially came to an end in 2016, Bledel has only taken on a few roles. In 2019, she starred in Crypto and most recently assumed the role of Emily Malek in The Handmaid’s Tale (2021), for which she won her only Emmy Award.

The series represents a tragic, dystopian vision, of which Bledel has said, “The challenge of it was really appealing, because it is so different from the other work I’ve done.” Crediting the role of Samantha Morton in Sweet and Lowdown as inspiration, she continued, “I was so moved by her performance… I knew how much was possible without words.”

There have been dozens of entertaining Alexis Bledel movies and TV shows over the years. For any fans of the strikingly blue-eyed actress or Gilmore Girls, check out one — or more — of the actress’ other films.

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