Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#23757
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Dawn Ford works on versatility rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Dawn Ford appears in 15 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Dawn. On the Basis of Sex is the clearest case: a film rated 7.1 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, mystery. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Laurent Zeitoun, Luis Oliva, Gavin Michael Booth and others, Dawn Ford 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.
On the Basis of Sex (2018) as Nurse 1 · Fireheart (2022) as (voice) · The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet (2013) as Marge
Career snapshot
Ranked #23757 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
15
2006–2026
Career length
20 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.1
On the Basis of Sex
Average Nutevio score
4.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
On the Basis of Sex
Most frequent director
Laurent Zeitoun
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Laurent Zeitoun
Most common genre
Drama
8 titles
Average runtime
1h 29m
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
6.2
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
6.6 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. On the Basis of Sex, Death Wish, Brad's Status — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.6
Across 5 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.5
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2000s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Covenant.
Most productive era
2020s
9 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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.74 films | 4.84 films |
| Action | 5.91 film | 6.41 film | — |
| Thriller | — | 6.41 film | 2.13 films |
| Comedy | — | 6.32 films | 3.44 films |
| Crime | — | 6.41 film | 6.31 film |
| Romance | — | — | 6.41 film |
| Horror | 5.91 film | — | 0.01 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2006The Covenant
Where our catalogue meets this career, as School Nurse.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
7.1 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
The current state of the argument, as Patricia.
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 (voice)
Directed by Laurent Zeitoun
as Marge
Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet
as Evelyn
Directed by Unknown
as Patricia
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
Nurse 1
On the Basis of Sex (2018)
Performance score7.0
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Nurse 1 gives Dawn Ford a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
(voice)
Fireheart (2022)
Performance score6.8
Fireheart asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Marge
The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet (2013)
Performance score6.7
The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Marge is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Evelyn
Bury the Devil (2026)
Performance score6.5
Bury the Devil asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Evelyn 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 Nurse 1
Start here. On the Basis of Sex is the clearest statement of what Dawn Ford does — accessible, 120 minutes, and rated 7.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Dawn 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.
The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet (2013)
Keeps the drama register of On the Basis of Sex but asks for a colder reading of it.
Fireheart (2022)
Keeps the adventure register of The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet but asks for a colder reading of it.
Bury the Devil (2026)
A deliberate change of key after Fireheart — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Secrets on the Ranch (2026)
Same director as Bury the Devil, 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.
Renny Harlin
Director
1 film together
Notably The Covenant
Tarsem Singh
Director
1 film together
Notably Mirror Mirror
Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Director
1 film together
Notably The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet
Mike White
Director
1 film together
Notably Brad's Status
Eli Roth
Director
1 film together
Notably Death Wish
Mimi Leder
Director
1 film together
Notably On the Basis of Sex
Gavin Michael Booth
Director
1 film together
Notably Rent Do
Luis Oliva
Director
1 film together
Notably BROCA
Laurent Zeitoun
Director
1 film together
Notably Fireheart
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Mimi Leder
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
On the Basis of SexLaurent Zeitoun
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
FireheartJean-Pierre Jeunet
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Young and Prodigious T.S. SpivetEli Roth
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Death WishMike White
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Brad's StatusTarsem Singh
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mirror MirrorRenny Harlin
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 CovenantLuis Oliva
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BROCAGavin Michael Booth
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Rent DoSix 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
On the Basis of Sex
as Nurse 1
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet
as Marge
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
On the Basis of Sex
as Nurse 1
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Crisis
as Tenure Chairwoman
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
On the Basis of Sex
as Nurse 1
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. Dawn Ford 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
20 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
On the Basis of Sex
as Nurse 1
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Death Wish
as Nurse with ER Attending
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Out Standing
as Elizabeth
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Secrets on the Ranch
as Patricia
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet
as Marge
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Covenant
as School Nurse
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Fireheart
as (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Covenant
as School Nurse
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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Reference
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