Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#21687
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Alison Lohman works on versatility 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.
Alison Lohman appears in 12 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Alison. Big Fish is the clearest case: a film rated 7.8 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for mystery, thriller, action. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Brian Taylor, Sam Raimi, Robert Zemeckis and others, Alison Lohman 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.
Big Fish (2003) as Sandra Bloom (young) · Matchstick Men (2003) as Angela · White Oleander (2002) as Astrid Magnussen
Career snapshot
Ranked #21687 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
12
1999–2016
Career length
17 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.8
Big Fish
Average Nutevio score
6.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.8
Big Fish
Most frequent director
Brian Taylor
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Brian Taylor
Most common genre
Drama
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 45m
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
6.4
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
1990s
7.0 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. The Thirteenth Floor — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
7.0
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
7.1
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1990s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Thirteenth Floor.
Most productive era
2000s
10 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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.87 films | — |
| Action | — | 5.82 films | — |
| Thriller | 7.01 film | 6.34 films | 4.31 film |
| Comedy | — | 6.62 films | — |
| Crime | — | 6.62 films | — |
| Horror | — | 6.51 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Honey Bear Girl.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2003Big Fish
7.8 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
2016Urge
The current state of the argument, as Mother.
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.
12 of 12 films
as Sandra Bloom (young)
Directed by Tim Burton
as Astrid Magnussen
Directed by Peter Kosminsky
as Angela
Directed by Ridley Scott
as Christine Brown
Directed by Sam Raimi
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Sandra Bloom (young)
Big Fish (2003)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Sandra Bloom (young) gives Alison Lohman a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Astrid Magnussen
White Oleander (2002)
Performance score7.6
White Oleander asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Astrid Magnussen is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Katherine "Katy" McLaughlin
Flicka (2006)
Performance score7.5
Flicka asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Katherine "Katy" McLaughlin is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Angela
Matchstick Men (2003)
Performance score7.4
Matchstick Men asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Angela 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 Sandra Bloom (young)
Start here. Big Fish is the clearest statement of what Alison Lohman does — accessible, 125 minutes, and rated 7.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Alison 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.
White Oleander (2002)
Keeps the drama register of Big Fish but asks for a colder reading of it.
Matchstick Men (2003)
Keeps the drama register of White Oleander but asks for a colder reading of it.
Flicka (2006)
Keeps the drama register of Matchstick Men but asks for a colder reading of it.
Drag Me to Hell (2009)
A deliberate change of key after Flicka — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Josef Rusnak
Director
1 film together
Notably The Thirteenth Floor
Peter Kosminsky
Director
1 film together
Notably White Oleander
Ridley Scott
Director
1 film together
Notably Matchstick Men
Tim Burton
Director
1 film together
Notably Big Fish
Atom Egoyan
Director
1 film together
Notably Where the Truth Lies
Mark Mylod
Director
1 film together
Notably The Big White
Susanne Bier
Director
1 film together
Notably Things We Lost in the Fire
Robert Zemeckis
Director
1 film together
Notably Beowulf
Sam Raimi
Director
1 film together
Notably Drag Me to Hell
Brian Taylor
Director
1 film together
Notably Gamer
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Tim Burton
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Big FishRidley Scott
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Matchstick MenPeter Kosminsky
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
White OleanderJosef Rusnak
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Thirteenth FloorSusanne Bier
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Things We Lost in the FireSam Raimi
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Drag Me to HellMark Mylod
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Big WhiteAtom Egoyan
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Where the Truth LiesRobert Zemeckis
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BeowulfBrian Taylor
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
GamerSix 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
Big Fish
as Sandra Bloom (young)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Big Fish
as Sandra Bloom (young)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Big Fish
as Sandra Bloom (young)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Thirteenth Floor
as Honey Bear Girl
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Big Fish
as Sandra Bloom (young)
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. Alison Lohman 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.
Modern Classic Performer
Awarded
Defining performances delivered inside the last twenty-five years, in films already being taught rather than merely remembered.
Drama Legend
Awarded
7 catalogue titles in drama, 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
Big Fish
as Sandra Bloom (young)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Thirteenth Floor
as Honey Bear Girl
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Big Fish
as Sandra Bloom (young)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Thirteenth Floor
as Honey Bear Girl
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Big Fish
as Sandra Bloom (young)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Beowulf
as Ursula (Voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Big White
as Tiffany
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Big Fish
as Sandra Bloom (young)
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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Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Harry Dean Stanton
Works with the same directors — Ridley Scott
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Morgan Freeman
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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