Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#8829
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Cleo King represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 33 years in, and Cleo is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Cleo King appears in 16 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Cleo. Dogville 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, drama, romance. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Josh Greenbaum, Trent O'Donnell, Courteney Cox and others, Cleo King 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.
Dogville (2003) as Olivia · Magnolia (1999) as Marcie · The Hangover (2009) as Officer Garden
Career snapshot
Ranked #8829 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
16
1993–2026
Career length
33 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.8
Dogville
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.8
Dogville
Most frequent director
Josh Greenbaum
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Josh Greenbaum
Most common genre
Comedy
10 titles
Average runtime
1h 54m
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
1990s
7.1 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Magnolia, Six Degrees of Separation — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
7.1
Across 2 catalogue films 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. Magnolia, Six Degrees of Separation.
Most productive era
2000s
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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.12 films | 7.33 films | 6.41 film | 6.32 films |
| Action | — | 6.32 films | 6.01 film | — |
| Thriller | — | 7.62 films | — | — |
| Comedy | 6.41 film | 6.55 films | 6.22 films | 6.32 films |
| Crime | — | 7.04 films | — | — |
| Romance | — | 6.12 films | 6.22 films | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Lieutenant Price.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2003Dogville
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
2026The Dink
The current state of the argument, as Gail.
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 Olivia
Directed by Lars von Trier
as Marcie
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
as Officer Garden
Directed by Todd Phillips
as Barbara Kreuster
Directed by Alan Parker
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
Olivia
Dogville (2003)
Performance score7.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Olivia gives Cleo King a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Marcie
Magnolia (1999)
Performance score7.5
Magnolia asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Marcie is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Officer Garden
The Hangover (2009)
Performance score7.4
The Hangover asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Officer Garden is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Barbara Kreuster
The Life of David Gale (2003)
Performance score7.2
The Life of David Gale asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Barbara Kreuster 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 Olivia
Start here. Dogville is the clearest statement of what Cleo King does — accessible, 178 minutes, and rated 7.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Cleo 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.
Magnolia (1999)
Keeps the drama register of Dogville but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Life of David Gale (2003)
Keeps the drama register of Magnolia but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Hangover (2009)
A deliberate change of key after The Life of David Gale — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Date Nite (2020)
A deliberate change of key after The Hangover — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Paul Thomas Anderson
Director
1 film together
Notably Magnolia
Lars von Trier
Director
1 film together
Notably Dogville
Alan Parker
Director
1 film together
Notably The Life of David Gale
Dennis Dugan
Director
1 film together
Notably National Security
Bill Condon
Director
1 film together
Notably Dreamgirls
David Gordon Green
Director
1 film together
Notably Pineapple Express
Todd Phillips
Director
1 film together
Notably The Hangover
Garry Marshall
Director
1 film together
Notably Valentine's Day
Michael Bay
Director
1 film together
Notably Transformers: Age of Extinction
Courteney Cox
Director
1 film together
Notably Just Before I Go
Trent O'Donnell
Director
1 film together
Notably Ride the Eagle
Josh Greenbaum
Director
1 film together
Notably The Dink
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Lars von Trier
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
DogvillePaul Thomas Anderson
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
MagnoliaTodd Phillips
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The HangoverAlan Parker
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Life of David GaleBill Condon
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
DreamgirlsDavid Gordon Green
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Pineapple ExpressJosh Greenbaum
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 DinkCourteney Cox
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Just Before I GoTrent O'Donnell
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Ride the EagleMichael Bay
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Transformers: Age of ExtinctionDennis Dugan
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
National SecurityGarry Marshall
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Valentine's DaySix 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
The Life of David Gale
as Barbara Kreuster
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Dreamgirls
as Janice
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Dogville
as Olivia
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Six Degrees of Separation
as Lieutenant Price
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Dogville
as Olivia
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. Cleo King 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
33 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.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
10 catalogue titles in comedy, 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
Dogville
as Olivia
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Dogville
as Olivia
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Dreamgirls
as Janice
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Six Degrees of Separation
as Lieutenant Price
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Dogville
as Olivia
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Transformers: Age of Extinction
as Realtor
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Just Before I Go
as Berta
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Dink
as Gail
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
Community
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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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