Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#13014
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Ángela Molina represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 49 years in, and Ángela is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Ángela Molina appears in 15 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Ángela. Cosmos is the clearest case: a film rated 8.7 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 drama, thriller, fantasy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Uberto Pasolini, Giuseppe Tornatore, Pedro Almodóvar and others, Ángela Molina 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.
Cosmos (2026) as Lena · Milarepa (2025) as Khulan · Baaria (2009) as Sarina adulta
Career snapshot
Ranked #13014 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
15
1977–2026
Career length
49 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.7
Cosmos
Average Nutevio score
5.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.7
Cosmos
Most frequent director
Pedro Almodóvar
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Pedro Almodóvar
Most common genre
Drama
12 titles
Average runtime
1h 44m
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
6.7
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
2000s
7.2 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Baaria, Broken Embraces — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
7.2
Across 2 catalogue films 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. That Obscure Object of Desire.
Most productive era
2020s
8 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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.11 film | 6.72 films | 7.22 films | — | 5.97 films |
| Action | — | 6.41 film | — | — | — |
| Thriller | — | 7.01 film | 7.21 film | — | 3.62 films |
| Comedy | 7.11 film | — | 7.21 film | — | 6.33 films |
| Romance | 7.11 film | 7.01 film | 7.22 films | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1977That Obscure Object of Desire
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Conchita.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2026Cosmos
8.7 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. The current state of the argument, as Lena.
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.
15 of 15 films
as Conchita
Directed by Luis Buñuel
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
Lena
Cosmos (2026)
Performance score9.1
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Lena gives Ángela Molina a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Khulan
Milarepa (2025)
Performance score7.6
Milarepa asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Khulan is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Charlotte
Charlotte (2021)
Performance score7.5
Charlotte asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Charlotte is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Conchita
That Obscure Object of Desire (1977)
Performance score7.5
That Obscure Object of Desire asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Conchita 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 Lena
Start here. Cosmos is the clearest statement of what Ángela Molina does — accessible, 153 minutes, and rated 8.7 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Ángela 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.
That Obscure Object of Desire (1977)
Keeps the drama register of Cosmos but asks for a colder reading of it.
Charlotte (2021)
Keeps the comedy register of That Obscure Object of Desire but asks for a colder reading of it.
They Will Be Dust (2024)
Same director as Charlotte, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Milarepa (2025)
Same director as They Will Be Dust, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Pedro Almodóvar
Director
2 films together
Notably Broken Embraces
Luis Buñuel
Director
1 film together
Notably That Obscure Object of Desire
Ridley Scott
Director
1 film together
Notably 1492: Conquest of Paradise
Giuseppe Tornatore
Director
1 film together
Notably Baaria
Uberto Pasolini
Director
1 film together
Notably The Return
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Pedro Almodóvar
Director
2 films together · 7.1 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Broken EmbracesGiuseppe Tornatore
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BaariaLuis Buñuel
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
That Obscure Object of DesireUberto Pasolini
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The ReturnRidley Scott
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
1492: Conquest of ParadiseSix 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
Cosmos
as Lena
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Milarepa
as Khulan
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Cosmos
as Lena
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Broken Embraces
as Lena's Mother
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Cosmos
as Lena
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. Ángela Molina 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.
Career Achievement
Awarded
49 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
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
12 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
Cosmos
as Lena
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Cosmos
as Lena
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Milarepa
as Khulan
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Milarepa
as Khulan
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Cosmos
as Lena
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
1492: Conquest of Paradise
as Beatrix
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
That Obscure Object of Desire
as Conchita
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
1492: Conquest of Paradise
as Beatrix
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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Elliot Page
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Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Harry Dean Stanton
Works with the same directors — Ridley Scott
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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