Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#19921
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Géraldine Pailhas represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 31 years in, and Géraldine is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Géraldine Pailhas appears in 4 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Géraldine. A Magnificent Life is the clearest case: a film rated 7.4 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, emotional range, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for drama, animation, history. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Christopher Thompson, François Ozon, Jeremy Leven, Géraldine Pailhas 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.
A Magnificent Life (2025) as Augustine Pagnol (voice) · Don Juan DeMarco (1994) as Dona Ana · Everything Went Fine (2021) as Pascale Bernheim
Career snapshot
Ranked #19921 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
4
1994–2025
Career length
31 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.4
A Magnificent Life
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.4
A Magnificent Life
Most frequent director
Christopher Thompson
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Christopher Thompson
Most common genre
Drama
3 titles
Average runtime
1h 38m
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
6.6
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
1990s
6.8 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Don Juan DeMarco — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
6.8
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
6.8
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1990s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Don Juan DeMarco.
Most productive era
2020s
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 | 1990s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.81 film | 7.02 films |
| Comedy | 6.81 film | 5.92 films |
| Romance | 6.81 film | 5.21 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1994Don Juan DeMarco
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Dona Ana.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
7.4 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 Augustine Pagnol (voice).
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.
4 of 4 films
as Augustine Pagnol (voice)
Directed by Unknown
as Pascale Bernheim
Directed by François Ozon
as Dona Ana
Directed by Jeremy Leven
as Charly Fleury
Directed by Christopher Thompson
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
Augustine Pagnol (voice)
A Magnificent Life (2025)
Performance score7.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Augustine Pagnol (voice) gives Géraldine Pailhas a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Pascale Bernheim
Everything Went Fine (2021)
Performance score7.0
Everything Went Fine asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Pascale Bernheim is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Dona Ana
Don Juan DeMarco (1994)
Performance score7.0
Don Juan DeMarco asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Dona Ana is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Charly Fleury
The Butcher's Daughter (2022)
Performance score6.5
The Butcher's Daughter asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Charly Fleury 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 Augustine Pagnol (voice)
Start here. A Magnificent Life is the clearest statement of what Géraldine Pailhas does — accessible, 91 minutes, and rated 7.4 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Géraldine 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.
Don Juan DeMarco (1994)
Keeps the drama register of A Magnificent Life but asks for a colder reading of it.
Everything Went Fine (2021)
Keeps the comedy register of Don Juan DeMarco but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Butcher's Daughter (2022)
Keeps the comedy register of Everything Went Fine but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Jeremy Leven
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Don Juan DeMarcoFrançois Ozon
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Everything Went FineChristopher Thompson
Director
1 film together · 5.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Butcher's DaughterSix 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 Magnificent Life
as Augustine Pagnol (voice)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
A Magnificent Life
as Augustine Pagnol (voice)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
A Magnificent Life
as Augustine Pagnol (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
A Magnificent Life
as Augustine Pagnol (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
A Magnificent Life
as Augustine Pagnol (voice)
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. Géraldine Pailhas 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
31 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
3 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
A Magnificent Life
as Augustine Pagnol (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
A Magnificent Life
as Augustine Pagnol (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
A Magnificent Life
as Augustine Pagnol (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Don Juan DeMarco
as Dona Ana
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
A Magnificent Life
as Augustine Pagnol (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Don Juan DeMarco
as Dona Ana
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
A Magnificent Life
as Augustine Pagnol (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Butcher's Daughter
as Charly Fleury
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: animation and comedy
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and comedy
Tom Wilkinson
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and drama
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Have your say
Community
Which Géraldine Pailhas 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
