Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#2247
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Kat Dennings 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.
Kat Dennings appears in 15 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Kat. Thor is the clearest case: a film rated 7.0 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 action, comedy, fantasy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Taika Waititi, Nicol Paone, Alan Taylor and others, Kat Dennings 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.
Thor (2011) as Darcy Lewis · Marvel Studios' 2021 Disney+ Day Special (2021) as Darcy Lewis (archive footage) · Thor: The Dark World (2013) as Darcy Lewis
Career snapshot
Ranked #2247 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
15
2005–2022
Career length
17 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.0
Thor
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
6.9
Marvel Studios' 2021 Disney+ Day Special
Most frequent director
Taika Waititi
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Taika Waititi
Most common genre
Comedy
9 titles
Average runtime
1h 31m
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
6.3
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
6.5 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Marvel Studios: Expanding the Universe, Thor: The Dark World, Thor — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.5
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.4
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. Defendor, Shorts, Charlie Bartlett.
Most productive era
2000s
9 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 | 6.34 films | — | — |
| Action | 6.41 film | 6.82 films | 6.61 film |
| Thriller | 5.91 film | — | — |
| Comedy | 6.27 films | — | 5.72 films |
| Crime | 6.12 films | — | — |
| Romance | 6.26 films | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Marla.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2011Thor
7.0 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
The current state of the argument, as Darcy.
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.
15 of 15 films
as Darcy Lewis
Directed by Kenneth Branagh
as Katrina Debrofkowitz
Directed by Peter Stebbings
as Susan Gardner
Directed by Jon Poll
as Norah
Directed by Peter Sollett
as Darcy Lewis (archive footage)
Directed by Unknown
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
Darcy Lewis
Thor (2011)
Performance score7.1
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Darcy Lewis gives Kat Dennings a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Katrina Debrofkowitz
Defendor (2009)
Performance score6.9
Defendor asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Katrina Debrofkowitz is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Susan Gardner
Charlie Bartlett (2008)
Performance score6.9
Charlie Bartlett asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Susan Gardner is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Norah
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2008)
Performance score6.9
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Norah 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 Darcy Lewis
Start here. Thor is the clearest statement of what Kat Dennings does — accessible, 115 minutes, and rated 7.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Kat 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.
Charlie Bartlett (2008)
A deliberate change of key after Thor — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2008)
Keeps the romance register of Charlie Bartlett but asks for a colder reading of it.
Defendor (2009)
Keeps the comedy register of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist but asks for a colder reading of it.
Marvel Studios' 2021 Disney+ Day Special (2021)
A deliberate change of key after Defendor — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Judd Apatow
Director
1 film together
Notably The 40 Year Old Virgin
John Whitesell
Director
1 film together
Notably Big Momma's House 2
Peter Sollett
Director
1 film together
Notably Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
Fred Wolf
Director
1 film together
Notably The House Bunny
Jon Poll
Director
1 film together
Notably Charlie Bartlett
Robert Rodriguez
Director
1 film together
Notably Shorts
Peter Stebbings
Director
1 film together
Notably Defendor
Kenneth Branagh
Director
1 film together
Notably Thor
Alan Taylor
Director
1 film together
Notably Thor: The Dark World
Nicol Paone
Director
1 film together
Notably Friendsgiving
Taika Waititi
Director
1 film together
Notably Thor: Love and Thunder
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Kenneth Branagh
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
ThorAlan Taylor
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Thor: The Dark WorldJon Poll
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Charlie BartlettTaika Waititi
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Thor: Love and ThunderPeter Stebbings
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
DefendorPeter Sollett
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Nick and Norah's Infinite PlaylistJudd Apatow
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The 40 Year Old VirginRobert Rodriguez
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
ShortsJohn Whitesell
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Big Momma's House 2Fred Wolf
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The House BunnyNicol Paone
Director
1 film together · 4.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
FriendsgivingSix 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
Thor
as Darcy Lewis
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
London
as Lilly
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Thor
as Darcy Lewis
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Marvel Studios' 2021 Disney+ Day Special
as Darcy Lewis (archive footage)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Thor
as Darcy Lewis
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. Kat Dennings 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.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
9 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
Thor
as Darcy Lewis
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Thor
as Darcy Lewis
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
London
as Lilly
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Thor
as Darcy Lewis
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Thor
as Darcy Lewis
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Thor: The Dark World
as Darcy Lewis
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Charlie Bartlett
as Susan Gardner
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Thor
as Darcy Lewis
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
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Reference
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