Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#11098
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Jessica Harper represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 52 years in, and Jessica is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Jessica Harper appears in 13 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Jessica. Kill Me is the clearest case: a film rated 10.0 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 mystery, comedy, romance. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Matthew Shear, Marielle Heller, Luca Guadagnino and others, Jessica Harper 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.
Kill Me (2026) · Minority Report (2002) as Anne Lively · Suspiria (1977) as Suzy Bannion
Career snapshot
Ranked #11098 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
13
1974–2026
Career length
52 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
10.0
Kill Me
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
10.0
Kill Me
Most frequent director
Luca Guadagnino
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Luca Guadagnino
Most common genre
Comedy
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 49m
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
7.0
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
2000s
7.4 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Minority Report — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
7.4
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1970s
7.5
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. Suspiria, Love and Death, Phantom of the Paradise.
Most productive era
2020s
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 | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.21 film | 6.91 film | 7.01 film | — | 6.91 film | 6.73 films |
| Action | — | — | — | 7.41 film | — | — |
| Thriller | — | — | — | 7.41 film | — | — |
| Comedy | 7.22 films | 6.91 film | — | — | — | 5.54 films |
| Romance | — | 6.91 film | — | — | — | 4.43 films |
| Horror | 7.32 films | — | — | — | 6.91 film | 6.32 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Phoenix.
First Nutevio masterpiece · Highest rated performance · Career peak
2026Kill Me
The first film here to clear 9.0 on our scale — a threshold fewer than one film in ten reaches. 10.0 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
2026Fantasy Life
The current state of the argument, as Toby.
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.
13 of 13 films
as Suzy Bannion
Directed by Dario Argento
as Phoenix
Directed by Brian De Palma
as Anne Lively
Directed by Steven Spielberg
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
Kill Me
Kill Me (2026)
Performance score9.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. The role gives Jessica Harper a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Suzy Bannion
Suspiria (1977)
Performance score8.0
Suspiria asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Suzy Bannion is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Phoenix
Phantom of the Paradise (1974)
Performance score7.6
Phantom of the Paradise asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Phoenix is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Daisy
Stardust Memories (1980)
Performance score7.3
Stardust Memories asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Daisy 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
Start here. Kill Me is the clearest statement of what Jessica Harper does — accessible, 104 minutes, and rated 10.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Jessica 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.
Phantom of the Paradise (1974)
Keeps the comedy register of Kill Me but asks for a colder reading of it.
Suspiria (1977)
Keeps the horror register of Phantom of the Paradise but asks for a colder reading of it.
Stardust Memories (1980)
A deliberate change of key after Suspiria — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Minority Report (2002)
A deliberate change of key after Stardust Memories — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Woody Allen
Director
2 films together
Notably Love and Death
Luca Guadagnino
Director
2 films together
Notably Bones and All
Brian De Palma
Director
1 film together
Notably Phantom of the Paradise
Dario Argento
Director
1 film together
Notably Suspiria
Todd Haynes
Director
1 film together
Notably Safe
Steven Spielberg
Director
1 film together
Notably Minority Report
Marielle Heller
Director
1 film together
Notably Nightbitch
Matthew Shear
Director
1 film together
Notably Fantasy Life
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Woody Allen
Director
2 films together · 7.1 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Love and DeathLuca Guadagnino
Director
2 films together · 7.0 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Bones and AllSteven Spielberg
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Minority ReportDario Argento
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SuspiriaBrian De Palma
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Phantom of the ParadiseTodd Haynes
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SafeMatthew Shear
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fantasy LifeMarielle Heller
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
NightbitchSix 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
Kill Me
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Bones and All
as Barbara Kerns
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Kill Me
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Kill Me
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Kill Me
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. Jessica Harper 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
52 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.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
7 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
Kill Me
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Kill Me
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Bones and All
as Barbara Kerns
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Kill Me
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Kill Me
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Minority Report
as Anne Lively
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Stardust Memories
as Daisy
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Safe
as Joyce
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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