Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#54736
of 909177 performers
Top 10%
Alice Nunn works on quiet performance rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Alice Nunn appears in 4 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Alice. Johnny Got His Gun is the clearest case: a film rated 7.1 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, transformation, versatility. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, comedy, horror. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with James Foley, Charles Martin Smith, Tim Burton and others, Alice Nunn helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
Johnny Got His Gun (1971) as Third Nurse · Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985) as Large Marge · Trick or Treat (1986) as Sylvia Cavell
Career snapshot
Ranked #54736 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
4
1971–1987
Career length
16 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.1
Johnny Got His Gun
Average Nutevio score
6.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.5
Johnny Got His Gun
Most frequent director
James Foley
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With James Foley
Most common genre
Comedy
3 titles
Average runtime
1h 38m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.3
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
1970s
7.1 average MV
The 1970s are where the work and the material meet. Johnny Got His Gun — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1970s
7.1
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1970s
7.5
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1970s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Johnny Got His Gun.
Most productive era
1980s
3 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 1970s | 1980s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.11 film | — |
| Comedy | — | 6.23 films |
| Romance | — | 6.01 film |
| Horror | — | 6.21 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Third Nurse. 7.1 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
1987Who's That Girl
The current state of the argument, as Woman Parole Member.
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
4 of 4 films
as Woman Parole Member
Directed by James Foley
as Sylvia Cavell
Directed by Charles Martin Smith
as Large Marge
Directed by Tim Burton
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
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The defining work
#1
Third Nurse
Johnny Got His Gun (1971)
Performance score7.0
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Third Nurse gives Alice Nunn a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Woman Parole Member
Who's That Girl (1987)
Performance score6.5
Who's That Girl asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Woman Parole Member is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Sylvia Cavell
Trick or Treat (1986)
Performance score6.5
Trick or Treat asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Sylvia Cavell is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Large Marge
Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985)
Performance score6.5
Pee-wee's Big Adventure asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Large Marge is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Third Nurse
Start here. Johnny Got His Gun is the clearest statement of what Alice Nunn does — accessible, 112 minutes, and rated 7.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Alice at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985)
A deliberate change of key after Johnny Got His Gun — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Trick or Treat (1986)
Keeps the comedy register of Pee-wee's Big Adventure but asks for a colder reading of it.
Who's That Girl (1987)
Keeps the comedy register of Trick or Treat but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Dalton Trumbo
Director
1 film together
Notably Johnny Got His Gun
Tim Burton
Director
1 film together
Notably Pee-wee's Big Adventure
Charles Martin Smith
Director
1 film together
Notably Trick or Treat
James Foley
Director
1 film together
Notably Who's That Girl
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Dalton Trumbo
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Johnny Got His GunTim Burton
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Pee-wee's Big AdventureCharles Martin Smith
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Trick or TreatJames Foley
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Who's That GirlSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
Johnny Got His Gun
as Third Nurse
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Who's That Girl
as Woman Parole Member
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Johnny Got His Gun
as Third Nurse
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Johnny Got His Gun
as Third Nurse
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Johnny Got His Gun
as Third Nurse
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Alice Nunn has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
3 catalogue titles in comedy, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
Johnny Got His Gun
as Third Nurse
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Johnny Got His Gun
as Third Nurse
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Who's That Girl
as Woman Parole Member
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Johnny Got His Gun
as Third Nurse
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Johnny Got His Gun
as Third Nurse
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Pee-wee's Big Adventure
as Large Marge
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Johnny Got His Gun
as Third Nurse
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Who's That Girl
as Woman Parole Member
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
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Built a career in the same territory: family and comedy
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: family and comedy
Léa Seydoux
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Edward Norton
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
Harvey Keitel
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
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Reference
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