Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#16437
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Dolores Drake represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 30 years in, and Dolores is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Dolores Drake appears in 11 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Dolores. Voicemails for Isabelle is the clearest case: a film rated 7.9 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 romance, comedy, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Leah McKendrick, Osgood Perkins, Michelle Johnston and others, Dolores Drake 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.
Voicemails for Isabelle (2026) as Dolores Park Woman · A Little Christmas Charm (2020) as Mrs. Claus · A Cinderella Story: Starstruck (2021) as Louise
Career snapshot
Ranked #16437 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
11
1996–2026
Career length
30 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.9
Voicemails for Isabelle
Average Nutevio score
6.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.4
Voicemails for Isabelle
Most frequent director
Leah McKendrick
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Leah McKendrick
Most common genre
Romance
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 34m
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
2020s
6.7 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Voicemails for Isabelle, Keeper, A Cinderella Story: Starstruck — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
6.7
Across 6 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
6.8
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. Doctor Who.
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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 5.81 film | 6.81 film | 7.91 film |
| Comedy | — | — | 5.52 films | 6.94 films |
| Crime | — | 5.81 film | — | — |
| Romance | — | 5.81 film | 6.81 film | 6.94 films |
| Horror | — | — | — | 6.32 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1996Doctor Who
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Curtis.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
7.9 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. The current state of the argument, as Dolores Park Woman.
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 Dolores Park Woman
Directed by Leah McKendrick
as Louise
Directed by Michelle Johnston
as Waitress
Directed by Unknown
as Professor Emeritus's Wife
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
Dolores Park Woman
Voicemails for Isabelle (2026)
Performance score7.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Dolores Park Woman gives Dolores Drake a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Mrs. Claus
A Little Christmas Charm (2020)
Performance score6.8
A Little Christmas Charm asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mrs. Claus is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Louise
A Cinderella Story: Starstruck (2021)
Performance score6.7
A Cinderella Story: Starstruck asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Louise is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Waitress
Spontaneous (2020)
Performance score6.7
Spontaneous asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Waitress 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 Dolores Park Woman
Start here. Voicemails for Isabelle is the clearest statement of what Dolores Drake does — accessible, 119 minutes, and rated 7.9 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Dolores 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 Professor (2019)
Keeps the comedy register of Voicemails for Isabelle but asks for a colder reading of it.
A Little Christmas Charm (2020)
A deliberate change of key after The Professor — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Spontaneous (2020)
A deliberate change of key after A Little Christmas Charm — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
A Cinderella Story: Starstruck (2021)
Keeps the comedy register of Spontaneous but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Geoffrey Sax
Director
1 film together
Notably Doctor Who
Jonathan A. Rosenbaum
Director
1 film together
Notably Benchwarmers 2: Breaking Balls
Paul A. Kaufman
Director
1 film together
Notably A Very Vintage Christmas
Rich Newey
Director
1 film together
Notably A Little Christmas Charm
Stacey N. Harding
Director
1 film together
Notably A Lot Like Christmas
Michelle Johnston
Director
1 film together
Notably A Cinderella Story: Starstruck
Osgood Perkins
Director
1 film together
Notably Keeper
Leah McKendrick
Director
1 film together
Notably Voicemails for Isabelle
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Leah McKendrick
Director
1 film together · 7.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Voicemails for IsabelleRich Newey
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Little Christmas CharmMichelle Johnston
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Cinderella Story: StarstruckPaul A. Kaufman
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Very Vintage ChristmasGeoffrey Sax
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Doctor WhoStacey N. Harding
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Lot Like ChristmasOsgood Perkins
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
KeeperJonathan A. Rosenbaum
Director
1 film together · 4.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Benchwarmers 2: Breaking BallsSix 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
Voicemails for Isabelle
as Dolores Park Woman
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Voicemails for Isabelle
as Dolores Park Woman
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Voicemails for Isabelle
as Dolores Park Woman
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Voicemails for Isabelle
as Dolores Park Woman
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Voicemails for Isabelle
as Dolores Park Woman
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. Dolores Drake 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
30 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.
Romance Legend
Awarded
6 catalogue titles in romance, 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
Voicemails for Isabelle
as Dolores Park Woman
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Voicemails for Isabelle
as Dolores Park Woman
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Voicemails for Isabelle
as Dolores Park Woman
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Keeper
as Mrs. McCallum
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Voicemails for Isabelle
as Dolores Park Woman
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Doctor Who
as Curtis
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Voicemails for Isabelle
as Dolores Park Woman
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Married Life
as Cinema Cashier
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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