Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#11929
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Ellen Geer represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 33 years in, and Ellen is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Ellen Geer appears in 8 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Ellen. Harold and Maude is the clearest case: a film rated 7.3 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 action, comedy, thriller. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Gregory Jacobs, Griffin Dunne, Kevin Costner and others, Ellen Geer 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.
Harold and Maude (1971) as Sunshine Doré · Practical Magic (1998) as Pharmacist · Clear and Present Danger (1994) as Rose
Career snapshot
Ranked #11929 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
8
1971–2004
Career length
33 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.3
Harold and Maude
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.6
Harold and Maude
Most frequent director
Phillip Noyce
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Phillip Noyce
Most common genre
Drama
5 titles
Average runtime
2h 1m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.9
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
1970s
7.3 average MV
The 1970s are where the work and the material meet. Harold and Maude — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1970s
7.3
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1970s
7.6
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1970s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Harold and Maude.
Most productive era
1990s
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 | 1970s | 1990s | 2000s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.31 film | 6.64 films | — |
| Action | — | 6.63 films | 6.21 film |
| Thriller | — | 6.72 films | 6.21 film |
| Comedy | 7.31 film | 6.81 film | 6.21 film |
| Crime | — | 6.71 film | — |
| Romance | 7.31 film | 6.63 films | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
1971Harold and Maude
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Sunshine Doré. 7.3 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
2004Criminal
The current state of the argument, as Grandma.
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.
8 of 8 films
as Sunshine Doré
Directed by Hal Ashby
as Pharmacist
Directed by Griffin Dunne
as Rose
Directed by Phillip Noyce
as Woman at Al-Anon
Directed by Luis Mandoki
as Rose
Directed by Phillip Noyce
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
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The defining work
#1
Sunshine Doré
Harold and Maude (1971)
Performance score7.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Sunshine Doré gives Ellen Geer a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Pharmacist
Practical Magic (1998)
Performance score6.7
Practical Magic asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Pharmacist is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Rose
Clear and Present Danger (1994)
Performance score6.6
Clear and Present Danger asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Rose is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Woman at Al-Anon
When a Man Loves a Woman (1994)
Performance score6.6
When a Man Loves a Woman asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Woman at Al-Anon 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 Sunshine Doré
Start here. Harold and Maude is the clearest statement of what Ellen Geer does — accessible, 92 minutes, and rated 7.3 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Ellen 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.
Patriot Games (1992)
Keeps the drama register of Harold and Maude but asks for a colder reading of it.
Clear and Present Danger (1994)
Same director as Patriot Games, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
When a Man Loves a Woman (1994)
Keeps the drama register of Clear and Present Danger but asks for a colder reading of it.
Practical Magic (1998)
Keeps the romance register of When a Man Loves a Woman but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Phillip Noyce
Director
2 films together
Notably Clear and Present Danger
Hal Ashby
Director
1 film together
Notably Harold and Maude
Luis Mandoki
Director
1 film together
Notably When a Man Loves a Woman
Jon Turteltaub
Director
1 film together
Notably Phenomenon
Kevin Costner
Director
1 film together
Notably The Postman
Griffin Dunne
Director
1 film together
Notably Practical Magic
Gregory Jacobs
Director
1 film together
Notably Criminal
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Phillip Noyce
Director
2 films together · 6.7 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Clear and Present DangerHal Ashby
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Harold and MaudeGriffin Dunne
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Practical MagicLuis Mandoki
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
When a Man Loves a WomanJon Turteltaub
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
PhenomenonKevin Costner
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 PostmanGregory Jacobs
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
CriminalSix 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
Harold and Maude
as Sunshine Doré
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
When a Man Loves a Woman
as Woman at Al-Anon
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Harold and Maude
as Sunshine Doré
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Patriot Games
as Rose
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Harold and Maude
as Sunshine Doré
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. Ellen Geer 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
5 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
Harold and Maude
as Sunshine Doré
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Patriot Games
as Rose
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Phenomenon
as Bonnie
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Patriot Games
as Rose
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Patriot Games
as Rose
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Postman
as Mrs. Thompson
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Harold and Maude
as Sunshine Doré
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Clear and Present Danger
as Rose
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Reference
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