Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#12049
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Audra McDonald represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 29 years in, and Audra is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Audra McDonald appears in 11 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Audra. An Evening With Audra McDonald is the clearest case: a film rated 10.0 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 action, mystery, science fiction. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Rightor Doyle, Ava DuVernay, Liesl Tommy and others, Audra McDonald 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.
An Evening With Audra McDonald (2020) · Beauty and the Beast (2017) as Madame Garderobe · Respect (2021) as Barbara Franklin
Career snapshot
Ranked #12049 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
11
1998–2027
Career length
29 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
10.0
An Evening With Audra McDonald
Average Nutevio score
5.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
10.0
An Evening With Audra McDonald
Most frequent director
Rightor Doyle
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Rightor Doyle
Most common genre
Drama
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 43m
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
6.5
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
2010s
6.1 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Beauty and the Beast, Ricki and the Flash, Rampart — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.1
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
6.2
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. Annie, The Object of My Affection.
Most productive era
2020s
6 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 | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 5.81 film | 5.72 films | 6.53 films |
| Action | — | — | 0.01 film |
| Thriller | — | — | 0.01 film |
| Comedy | 6.41 film | 5.81 film | 5.31 film |
| Crime | — | 5.51 film | — |
| Romance | 5.81 film | 7.01 film | — |
| Horror | — | — | 0.01 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1998The Object of My Affection
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Wedding Singer.
First Nutevio masterpiece · Highest rated performance · Career peak
2020An Evening With Audra McDonald
The first film here to clear 9.0 on our scale — a threshold fewer than one film in ten reaches. 10.0 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
2027The Auction
The current state of the argument, as Rita White.
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.
11 of 11 films
as Barbara Franklin
Directed by Liesl Tommy
as Madame Garderobe
Directed by Bill Condon
as Miss Grace Farrell
Directed by Rob Marshall
as Rita White
Directed by Unknown
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
An Evening With Audra McDonald
An Evening With Audra McDonald (2020)
Performance score9.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. The role gives Audra McDonald a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Barbara Franklin
Respect (2021)
Performance score7.0
Respect asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Barbara Franklin is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Madame Garderobe
Beauty and the Beast (2017)
Performance score6.9
Beauty and the Beast asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Madame Garderobe is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Miss Grace Farrell
Annie (1999)
Performance score6.6
Annie asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Miss Grace Farrell 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
Start here. An Evening With Audra McDonald is the clearest statement of what Audra McDonald does — accessible, 0 minutes, and rated 10.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Audra 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.
Annie (1999)
A deliberate change of key after An Evening With Audra McDonald — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Beauty and the Beast (2017)
Keeps the family register of Annie but asks for a colder reading of it.
Respect (2021)
A deliberate change of key after Beauty and the Beast — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Auction (2027)
A deliberate change of key after Respect — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Nicholas Hytner
Director
1 film together
Notably The Object of My Affection
Rob Marshall
Director
1 film together
Notably Annie
Jonathan Demme
Director
1 film together
Notably Ricki and the Flash
Bill Condon
Director
1 film together
Notably Beauty and the Beast
Liesl Tommy
Director
1 film together
Notably Respect
Ava DuVernay
Director
1 film together
Notably Origin
Rightor Doyle
Director
1 film together
Notably Down Low
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Bill Condon
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Beauty and the BeastLiesl Tommy
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
RespectRob Marshall
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
AnnieAva DuVernay
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
OriginJonathan Demme
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Ricki and the FlashNicholas Hytner
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Object of My AffectionRightor Doyle
Director
1 film together · 5.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Down LowSix 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
An Evening With Audra McDonald
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Beauty and the Beast
as Madame Garderobe
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
An Evening With Audra McDonald
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Object of My Affection
as Wedding Singer
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
An Evening With Audra McDonald
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. Audra McDonald 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
29 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
6 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
An Evening With Audra McDonald
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
An Evening With Audra McDonald
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Origin
as Miss Hale
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Beauty and the Beast
as Madame Garderobe
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
An Evening With Audra McDonald
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Auction
as Rita White
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Ricki and the Flash
as Maureen Brummel
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Down Low
as Patty
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Ted Levine
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: drama and fantasy
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: family and comedy
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: family and comedy
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Have your say
Community
Which Audra McDonald performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
Join the conversation
Reference
Continue exploring
Trending performers
Directors they work with
Collections to read next
