Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#8312
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Erin Cummings 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.
Erin Cummings appears in 5 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Erin. King Richard is the clearest case: a film rated 7.6 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, drama, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for drama, history, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Reinaldo Marcus Green, James Franco, Tze Chun and others, Erin Cummings 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.
King Richard (2021) as Social Worker · The Disaster Artist (2017) as Female Guest (uncredited) · The Iceman (2012) as Ellen
Career snapshot
Ranked #8312 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
5
2009–2021
Career length
12 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.6
King Richard
Average Nutevio score
6.3
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.6
King Richard
Most frequent director
Reinaldo Marcus Green
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Reinaldo Marcus Green
Most common genre
Drama
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 50m
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
2020s
7.6 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. King Richard — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
7.6
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
7.6
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. Bitch Slap.
Most productive era
2010s
3 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 | 4.81 film | 6.43 films | 7.61 film |
| Action | 4.81 film | — | — |
| Thriller | 4.81 film | 6.02 films | — |
| Comedy | 4.81 film | 7.11 film | — |
| Crime | 4.81 film | 6.02 films | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2009Bitch Slap
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Hel.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2021King Richard
7.6 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 Social Worker.
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 Social Worker
Directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green
as Female Guest (uncredited)
Directed by James Franco
as Ellen
Directed by Unknown
as Hel
Directed by Rick Jacobson
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
Social Worker
King Richard (2021)
Performance score7.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Social Worker gives Erin Cummings a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Female Guest (uncredited)
The Disaster Artist (2017)
Performance score7.0
The Disaster Artist asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Female Guest (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Ellen
The Iceman (2012)
Performance score6.6
The Iceman asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Ellen is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Amber
Cold Comes the Night (2013)
Performance score6.5
Cold Comes the Night asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Amber 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 Social Worker
Start here. King Richard is the clearest statement of what Erin Cummings does — accessible, 144 minutes, and rated 7.6 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Erin 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.
Bitch Slap (2009)
Keeps the drama register of King Richard but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Iceman (2012)
Keeps the crime register of Bitch Slap but asks for a colder reading of it.
Cold Comes the Night (2013)
Keeps the crime register of The Iceman but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Disaster Artist (2017)
Keeps the drama register of Cold Comes the Night but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Rick Jacobson
Director
1 film together
Notably Bitch Slap
Tze Chun
Director
1 film together
Notably Cold Comes the Night
James Franco
Director
1 film together
Notably The Disaster Artist
Reinaldo Marcus Green
Director
1 film together
Notably King Richard
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Reinaldo Marcus Green
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
King RichardJames Franco
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Disaster ArtistTze Chun
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Cold Comes the NightRick Jacobson
Director
1 film together · 4.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Bitch SlapSix 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
King Richard
as Social Worker
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
King Richard
as Social Worker
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
King Richard
as Social Worker
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Disaster Artist
as Female Guest (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
King Richard
as Social Worker
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. Erin Cummings 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.
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
King Richard
as Social Worker
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Iceman
as Ellen
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
King Richard
as Social Worker
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Iceman
as Ellen
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
King Richard
as Social Worker
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Bitch Slap
as Hel
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
King Richard
as Social Worker
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Cold Comes the Night
as Amber
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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