Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#4121
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Frances O'Connor 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.
Frances O'Connor appears in 8 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Frances. The Conjuring 2 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 horror, family, adventure. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Michael Chaves, James Wan, Daniel Nettheim and others, Frances O'Connor 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.
The Conjuring 2 (2016) as Peggy Hodgson · A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) as Monica Swinton · The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025) as Peggy Hodgson
Career snapshot
Ranked #4121 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
8
2001–2025
Career length
24 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.3
The Conjuring 2
Average Nutevio score
6.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
The Conjuring 2
Most frequent director
Michael Chaves
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Michael Chaves
Most common genre
Adventure
3 titles
Average runtime
2h 2m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.0
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
6.6
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
7.0 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. The Conjuring 2, The Hunter — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.0
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
7.0
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. Timeline, Windtalkers, The Importance of Being Earnest.
Most productive era
2000s
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 | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.92 films | 6.71 film | — |
| Action | 6.12 films | — | — |
| Thriller | — | 6.71 film | — |
| Comedy | 6.81 film | — | — |
| Romance | 6.81 film | — | — |
| Horror | — | 7.31 film | 7.01 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Career peak
2001A.I. Artificial Intelligence
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Monica Swinton. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
2016The Conjuring 2
7.3 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
The current state of the argument, as Peggy Hodgson.
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 Monica Swinton
Directed by Steven Spielberg
as Peggy Hodgson
Directed by James Wan
as Lucy Armstrong
Directed by Daniel Nettheim
as Gwendolen Fairfax
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
Monica Swinton
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Performance score7.5
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Monica Swinton gives Frances O'Connor a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Peggy Hodgson
The Conjuring 2 (2016)
Performance score7.4
The Conjuring 2 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Peggy Hodgson is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Christie Hooper
Go! (2020)
Performance score7.2
Go! asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Christie Hooper is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Lucy Armstrong
The Hunter (2011)
Performance score7.1
The Hunter asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Lucy Armstrong 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 Monica Swinton
Start here. A.I. Artificial Intelligence is the clearest statement of what Frances O'Connor does — accessible, 146 minutes, and rated 7.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Frances 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 Importance of Being Earnest (2002)
Keeps the drama register of A.I. Artificial Intelligence but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Hunter (2011)
Keeps the drama register of The Importance of Being Earnest but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Conjuring 2 (2016)
A deliberate change of key after The Hunter — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Go! (2020)
A deliberate change of key after The Conjuring 2 — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Steven Spielberg
Director
1 film together
Notably A.I. Artificial Intelligence
Oliver Parker
Director
1 film together
Notably The Importance of Being Earnest
John Woo
Director
1 film together
Notably Windtalkers
Richard Donner
Director
1 film together
Notably Timeline
Daniel Nettheim
Director
1 film together
Notably The Hunter
James Wan
Director
1 film together
Notably The Conjuring 2
Michael Chaves
Director
1 film together
Notably The Conjuring: Last Rites
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
James Wan
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Conjuring 2Steven Spielberg
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A.I. Artificial IntelligenceMichael Chaves
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Conjuring: Last RitesOliver Parker
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Importance of Being EarnestDaniel Nettheim
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The HunterJohn Woo
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
WindtalkersRichard Donner
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
TimelineSix 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
The Conjuring 2
as Peggy Hodgson
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
The Importance of Being Earnest
as Gwendolen Fairfax
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
The Conjuring 2
as Peggy Hodgson
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Conjuring: Last Rites
as Peggy Hodgson
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
A.I. Artificial Intelligence
as Monica Swinton
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. Frances O'Connor 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
24 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.
Adventure Legend
Awarded
3 catalogue titles in adventure, 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
The Conjuring 2
as Peggy Hodgson
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Conjuring 2
as Peggy Hodgson
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Importance of Being Earnest
as Gwendolen Fairfax
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Go!
as Christie Hooper
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
A.I. Artificial Intelligence
as Monica Swinton
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Timeline
as Kate Ericson
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Importance of Being Earnest
as Gwendolen Fairfax
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Conjuring: Last Rites
as Peggy Hodgson
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Edward Norton
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
Tom Wilkinson
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
Have your say
Community
Which Frances O'Connor 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
