Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#10184
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Cathy Moriarty represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 45 years in, and Cathy is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Cathy Moriarty appears in 16 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Cathy. Disclosure 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 comedy, horror, romance. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Cameron Van Hoy, Jeff Hare, Richard Ayoade and others, Cathy Moriarty 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.
Disclosure (2020) as Montana Moorehead (archive footage) · Raging Bull (1980) as Vickie LaMotta · Cop Land (1997) as Rose Donlan
Career snapshot
Ranked #10184 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
16
1980–2025
Career length
45 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.8
Disclosure
Average Nutevio score
5.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.9
Raging Bull
Most frequent director
Cameron Van Hoy
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Cameron Van Hoy
Most common genre
Drama
8 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
6.6
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
1980s
7.8 average MV
The 1980s are where the work and the material meet. Raging Bull — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1980s
7.8
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1980s
7.9
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1980s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Raging Bull.
Most productive era
1990s
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 | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.81 film | 6.44 films | — | 6.32 films | 5.51 film |
| Action | — | 6.01 film | — | 5.91 film | — |
| Thriller | — | 6.33 films | — | 6.51 film | 6.11 film |
| Comedy | — | 6.43 films | 5.91 film | 5.91 film | 2.52 films |
| Crime | — | 6.42 films | 5.91 film | 6.11 film | 5.51 film |
| Romance | — | — | — | 5.91 film | 5.51 film |
| Horror | — | — | — | — | 0.01 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
1980Raging Bull
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Vickie LaMotta. 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
2025Sunday Sauce
The current state of the argument, as Nancy.
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.
16 of 16 films
as Vickie LaMotta
Directed by Martin Scorsese
as Montana Moorehead (archive footage)
Directed by Unknown
as Rose Donlan
Directed by James Mangold
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
Vickie LaMotta
Raging Bull (1980)
Performance score8.1
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Vickie LaMotta gives Cathy Moriarty a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Montana Moorehead (archive footage)
Disclosure (2020)
Performance score7.6
Disclosure asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Montana Moorehead (archive footage) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Ruth Corday / Carole
Matinee (1993)
Performance score7.1
Matinee asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Ruth Corday / Carole is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Momma
Into the Arms of Danger (2020)
Performance score6.8
Into the Arms of Danger asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Momma 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 Vickie LaMotta
Start here. Raging Bull is the clearest statement of what Cathy Moriarty does — accessible, 129 minutes, and rated 7.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Cathy 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.
Matinee (1993)
Keeps the drama register of Raging Bull but asks for a colder reading of it.
Cop Land (1997)
Keeps the drama register of Matinee but asks for a colder reading of it.
Disclosure (2020)
A deliberate change of key after Cop Land — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Into the Arms of Danger (2020)
A deliberate change of key after Disclosure — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Martin Scorsese
Director
1 film together
Notably Raging Bull
Ivan Reitman
Director
1 film together
Notably Kindergarten Cop
Joe Dante
Director
1 film together
Notably Matinee
Brad Silberling
Director
1 film together
Notably Casper
Annette Haywood-Carter
Director
1 film together
Notably Foxfire
James Mangold
Director
1 film together
Notably Cop Land
Sidney Lumet
Director
1 film together
Notably Gloria
Harold Ramis
Director
1 film together
Notably Analyze That
Andy Tennant
Director
1 film together
Notably The Bounty Hunter
Richard Ayoade
Director
1 film together
Notably The Double
Jeff Hare
Director
1 film together
Notably Into the Arms of Danger
Cameron Van Hoy
Director
1 film together
Notably Flinch
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Martin Scorsese
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Raging BullJames Mangold
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Cop LandJoe Dante
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
MatineeRichard Ayoade
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The DoubleBrad Silberling
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
CasperJeff Hare
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Into the Arms of DangerIvan Reitman
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Kindergarten CopSidney Lumet
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
GloriaAnnette Haywood-Carter
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
FoxfireAndy Tennant
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Bounty HunterHarold Ramis
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Analyze ThatCameron Van Hoy
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
FlinchSix 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
Raging Bull
as Vickie LaMotta
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Raging Bull
as Vickie LaMotta
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Raging Bull
as Vickie LaMotta
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Disclosure
as Montana Moorehead (archive footage)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Raging Bull
as Vickie LaMotta
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. Cathy Moriarty 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
45 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
8 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
Raging Bull
as Vickie LaMotta
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Cop Land
as Rose Donlan
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Raging Bull
as Vickie LaMotta
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Cop Land
as Rose Donlan
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Raging Bull
as Vickie LaMotta
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Foxfire
as Martha Wirtz
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Matinee
as Ruth Corday / Carole
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Casper
as Carrigan
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Matt Damon
Works with the same directors — Martin Scorsese
Leonardo DiCaprio
Works with the same directors — Martin Scorsese
Robert De Niro
Works with the same directors — Martin Scorsese
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 Cathy Moriarty performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
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Reference
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