Do we like Toni Collette?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A clean record on harm and a long charity gig, but the search turned up little on her views, so we stop short of the top end.
Toni Collette is the Aussie actor who went from Muriel's Wedding to Hollywood and has barely put a foot wrong since. TIME's 2018 profile has her breaking through with American audiences in The Sixth Sense, which earned an Oscar nomination. She followed it with Little Miss Sunshine and a run of odd, brave character parts.
The one proper courtroom drama in her past is a property one. The sellers of a $6.35 million Paddington terrace sued her and her husband over a deal that fell through, and in 2013 they were ordered to pay more than $800,000 in damages. A later report said the couple had reportedly dropped their appeal. It's a civil money fight, not a story about how she treats people, so it's a splash of mud rather than a stain.
Her recent work doesn't ring alarm bells either. Her latest big thing is Netflix's Wayward, co-created by Mae Martin, in which she plays the head of a troubled-teen school. Variety called her performance “hauntingly good”, and the show, set in 2003, is a take on the troubled-teen industry rather than a celebration of it. Gay Times also reported in 2023 that she was delighted to hear Hereditary has a big LGBTQ+ following.
Nothing new on her lately in the way of news. The 2026 hits we found were gossip-site fluff, which we've ignored. Her recent interviews are mostly about her work, including a 2023 one where she said she asked intimacy coordinators to leave a set because they were making her more anxious. That's a working-style call, and it comes down to taste rather than harm.
The real good stuff is Concern Worldwide. In 2014 she became the charity's first global ambassador, for its work with people in extreme poverty, and said she was “deeply honoured” to be asked. That's years of putting her name to something that isn't about her.
So the verdict: she passes both our tests, with the caveat that the record on her politics is thin. We found nothing harmful and no pattern of bad behaviour, and she has a decent charity run. We'd be happy to line up for the next one.