Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#16062
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Cara Seymour represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 28 years in, and Cara is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Cara Seymour appears in 14 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Cara. Hotel Rwanda is the clearest case: a film rated 7.6 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 horror, thriller, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Thomas Napper, Lone Scherfig, Julian Jarrold and others, Cara Seymour 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.
Hotel Rwanda (2004) as Pat Archer · Dancer in the Dark (2000) as Linda Houston · American Psycho (2000) as Christie
Career snapshot
Ranked #16062 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
14
1998–2026
Career length
28 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.6
Hotel Rwanda
Average Nutevio score
6.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.8
Dancer in the Dark
Most frequent director
Thomas Napper
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Thomas Napper
Most common genre
Drama
12 titles
Average runtime
1h 51m
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
2000s
7.0 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. An Education, Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1974, Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1983 — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
7.0
Across 10 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
7.0
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. You've Got Mail.
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 | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 7.010 films | 6.62 films |
| Thriller | — | 7.03 films | 0.01 film |
| Comedy | 6.81 film | 7.31 film | — |
| Crime | — | 7.26 films | — |
| Romance | 6.81 film | 6.91 film | — |
| Horror | — | — | 0.01 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1998You've Got Mail
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Gillian Quinn.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
7.6 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
2026I Live Here Now
The current state of the argument, as Cindy.
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.
14 of 14 films
as Pat Archer
Directed by Terry George
as Christie
Directed by Mary Harron
as Hell-Cat Maggie
Directed by Martin Scorsese
as Amelia Kavan
Directed by Spike Jonze
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
Linda Houston
Dancer in the Dark (2000)
Performance score7.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Linda Houston gives Cara Seymour a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Pat Archer
Hotel Rwanda (2004)
Performance score7.4
Hotel Rwanda asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Pat Archer is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Christie
American Psycho (2000)
Performance score7.4
American Psycho asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Christie is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Hell-Cat Maggie
Gangs of New York (2002)
Performance score7.2
Gangs of New York asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Hell-Cat Maggie 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 Linda Houston
Start here. Dancer in the Dark is the clearest statement of what Cara Seymour does — accessible, 140 minutes, and rated 7.6 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Cara 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.
American Psycho (2000)
Keeps the crime register of Dancer in the Dark but asks for a colder reading of it.
Gangs of New York (2002)
Keeps the crime register of American Psycho but asks for a colder reading of it.
Adaptation. (2002)
Keeps the crime register of Gangs of New York but asks for a colder reading of it.
Hotel Rwanda (2004)
Keeps the drama register of Adaptation. but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Nora Ephron
Director
1 film together
Notably You've Got Mail
Mary Harron
Director
1 film together
Notably American Psycho
Lars von Trier
Director
1 film together
Notably Dancer in the Dark
Spike Jonze
Director
1 film together
Notably Adaptation.
Martin Scorsese
Director
1 film together
Notably Gangs of New York
Terry George
Director
1 film together
Notably Hotel Rwanda
Anand Tucker
Director
1 film together
Notably Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1983
Julian Jarrold
Director
1 film together
Notably Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1974
Lone Scherfig
Director
1 film together
Notably An Education
Thomas Napper
Director
1 film together
Notably Widow Clicquot
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Terry George
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hotel RwandaLars von Trier
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Dancer in the DarkMary Harron
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
American PsychoMartin Scorsese
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Gangs of New YorkSpike Jonze
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Adaptation.Lone Scherfig
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
An EducationAnand Tucker
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1983Nora Ephron
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
You've Got MailThomas Napper
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Widow ClicquotJulian Jarrold
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1974Six 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
Hotel Rwanda
as Pat Archer
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
An Education
as Majorie
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Dancer in the Dark
as Linda Houston
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1983
as Mary Cole
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Dancer in the Dark
as Linda Houston
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. Cara Seymour 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
28 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
Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1983
as Mary Cole
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
American Psycho
as Christie
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
An Education
as Majorie
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1983
as Mary Cole
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
American Psycho
as Christie
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Adaptation.
as Amelia Kavan
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Adaptation.
as Amelia Kavan
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
American Psycho
as Christie
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: drama and history
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Works with the same directors — Martin Scorsese
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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