Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#41394
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Ella Smith 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.
Ella Smith appears in 5 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Ella. Cinderella is the clearest case: a film rated 6.8 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, quiet performance, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for comedy, adventure, family. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Dominic Brigstocke, Kenneth Branagh, Marjane Satrapi and others, Ella Smith 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.
Cinderella (2015) as Slipper Lady · The Voices (2014) as Alison · Womb (2010) as Molly
Career snapshot
Ranked #41394 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
5
2009–2019
Career length
10 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.8
Cinderella
Average Nutevio score
6.0
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
6.8
Cinderella
Most frequent director
Dominic Brigstocke
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Dominic Brigstocke
Most common genre
Comedy
3 titles
Average runtime
1h 44m
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
6.1
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
6.1 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Horrible Histories: The Movie — Rotten Romans, Cinderella, The Voices — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.1
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.1
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. St Trinian's 2: The Legend of Fritton's Gold.
Most productive era
2010s
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 | 2000s | 2010s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.81 film |
| Comedy | 5.61 film | 5.82 films |
| Crime | — | 6.31 film |
| Romance | — | 6.42 films |
| Horror | — | 6.31 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2009St Trinian's 2: The Legend of Fritton's Gold
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Lucy.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2015Cinderella
6.8 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
2019Horrible Histories: The Movie — Rotten Romans
The current state of the argument, as Mrs Dougal.
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 Slipper Lady
Directed by Kenneth Branagh
as Mrs Dougal
Directed by Dominic Brigstocke
as Alison
Directed by Marjane Satrapi
as Lucy
Directed by Oliver 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
Slipper Lady
Cinderella (2015)
Performance score6.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Slipper Lady gives Ella Smith a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Mrs Dougal
Horrible Histories: The Movie — Rotten Romans (2019)
Performance score6.5
Horrible Histories: The Movie — Rotten Romans asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mrs Dougal is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Alison
The Voices (2014)
Performance score6.5
The Voices asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Alison is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Molly
Womb (2010)
Performance score6.5
Womb asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Molly 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 Slipper Lady
Start here. Cinderella is the clearest statement of what Ella Smith does — accessible, 105 minutes, and rated 6.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Ella 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.
St Trinian's 2: The Legend of Fritton's Gold (2009)
Keeps the family register of Cinderella but asks for a colder reading of it.
Womb (2010)
A deliberate change of key after St Trinian's 2: The Legend of Fritton's Gold — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Voices (2014)
A deliberate change of key after Womb — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Horrible Histories: The Movie — Rotten Romans (2019)
Keeps the comedy register of The Voices but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Oliver Parker
Director
1 film together
Notably St Trinian's 2: The Legend of Fritton's Gold
Marjane Satrapi
Director
1 film together
Notably The Voices
Kenneth Branagh
Director
1 film together
Notably Cinderella
Dominic Brigstocke
Director
1 film together
Notably Horrible Histories: The Movie — Rotten Romans
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Kenneth Branagh
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
CinderellaMarjane Satrapi
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The VoicesOliver Parker
Director
1 film together · 5.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
St Trinian's 2: The Legend of Fritton's GoldDominic Brigstocke
Director
1 film together · 5.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Horrible Histories: The Movie — Rotten RomansSix 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
Cinderella
as Slipper Lady
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Cinderella
as Slipper Lady
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Cinderella
as Slipper Lady
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Horrible Histories: The Movie — Rotten Romans
as Mrs Dougal
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Cinderella
as Slipper Lady
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. Ella Smith 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.
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
3 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
Cinderella
as Slipper Lady
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Voices
as Alison
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Cinderella
as Slipper Lady
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Cinderella
as Slipper Lady
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Cinderella
as Slipper Lady
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Horrible Histories: The Movie — Rotten Romans
as Mrs Dougal
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Cinderella
as Slipper Lady
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Voices
as Alison
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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Built a career in the same territory: family and comedy
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: family and comedy
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Harvey Keitel
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
Tom Wilkinson
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
Harry Dean Stanton
Built a career in the same territory: drama and fantasy
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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