Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#206253
of 909177 performers
Top 25%
Elizabeth Allan works on quiet performance 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.
Elizabeth Allan appears in 5 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Elizabeth. Went the Day Well? is the clearest case: a film rated 6.7 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, transformation, versatility. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for war, thriller, romance. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Alberto Cavalcanti, George Cukor, Jack Conway and others, Elizabeth Allan 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.
Went the Day Well? (1942) as Peggy · Camille (1936) as Nichette · A Tale of Two Cities (1935) as Lucie Manette
Career snapshot
Ranked #206253 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
5
1935–1942
Career length
7 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.7
Went the Day Well?
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.2
Went the Day Well?
Most frequent director
George Cukor
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With George Cukor
Most common genre
Romance
3 titles
Average runtime
1h 43m
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
6.3
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
1940s
6.7 average MV
The 1940s are where the work and the material meet. Went the Day Well? — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1940s
6.7
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1940s
7.2
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1930s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Camille, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities.
Most productive era
1930s
4 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 | 1930s | 1940s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.63 films | — |
| Thriller | — | 6.71 film |
| Romance | 6.63 films | — |
| Horror | 6.31 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Clara Copperfield.
Highest rated performance
1936Camille
6.7 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak · Most recent film
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once. The current state of the argument, as Peggy.
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.
5 of 5 films
as Lucie Manette
Directed by Jack Conway
as Nichette
Directed by George Cukor
as Clara Copperfield
Directed by George Cukor
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
Peggy
Went the Day Well? (1942)
Performance score7.1
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Peggy gives Elizabeth Allan a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Lucie Manette
A Tale of Two Cities (1935)
Performance score7.0
A Tale of Two Cities asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Lucie Manette is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Nichette
Camille (1936)
Performance score6.9
Camille asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Nichette is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Irena Borotyn
Mark of the Vampire (1935)
Performance score6.8
Mark of the Vampire asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Irena Borotyn 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 Peggy
Start here. Went the Day Well? is the clearest statement of what Elizabeth Allan does — accessible, 92 minutes, and rated 6.7 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Elizabeth 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.
A Tale of Two Cities (1935)
A deliberate change of key after Went the Day Well? — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Mark of the Vampire (1935)
A deliberate change of key after A Tale of Two Cities — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
David Copperfield (1935)
A deliberate change of key after Mark of the Vampire — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Camille (1936)
Same director as David Copperfield, 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.
George Cukor
Director
2 films together
Notably Camille
Tod Browning
Director
1 film together
Notably Mark of the Vampire
Jack Conway
Director
1 film together
Notably A Tale of Two Cities
Alberto Cavalcanti
Director
1 film together
Notably Went the Day Well?
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
George Cukor
Director
2 films together · 6.6 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
CamilleAlberto Cavalcanti
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Went the Day Well?Jack Conway
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Tale of Two CitiesTod Browning
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mark of the VampireSix 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
A Tale of Two Cities
as Lucie Manette
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Camille
as Nichette
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Camille
as Nichette
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
David Copperfield
as Clara Copperfield
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Went the Day Well?
as Peggy
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. Elizabeth Allan 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.
Romance Legend
Awarded
3 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
Mark of the Vampire
as Irena Borotyn
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Mark of the Vampire
as Irena Borotyn
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Camille
as Nichette
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Mark of the Vampire
as Irena Borotyn
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
A Tale of Two Cities
as Lucie Manette
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
A Tale of Two Cities
as Lucie Manette
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
A Tale of Two Cities
as Lucie Manette
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Mark of the Vampire
as Irena Borotyn
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
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Robert Downey Jr.
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Jamie Harris
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Florence Pugh
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Have your say
Community
Which Elizabeth Allan performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
Join the conversation
Reference
Continue exploring
Trending performers
Directors they work with
Collections to read next
