Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#2888
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Kat Graham represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 27 years in, and Kat is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Kat Graham appears in 16 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Kat. Emperor 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 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 drama, thriller, mystery. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Tyler Perry, Andy Suriano, Mark Steven Johnson and others, Kat Graham 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.
Emperor (2020) as Delores · Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie (2022) as April O'Neil / Café Woman 3 (voice) · The Parent Trap (1998) as Jackie
Career snapshot
Ranked #2888 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
16
1998–2025
Career length
27 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.6
Emperor
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.6
Emperor
Most frequent director
Tyler Perry
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Tyler Perry
Most common genre
Comedy
8 titles
Average runtime
1h 44m
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
6.4
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
7.3 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. The Parent Trap — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
7.3
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
7.2
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. The Parent Trap.
Most productive era
2020s
8 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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | — | 6.12 films | 6.34 films |
| Action | — | — | 5.31 film | 6.82 films |
| Thriller | — | — | 5.13 films | 5.93 films |
| Comedy | 7.31 film | 5.92 films | 6.41 film | 6.64 films |
| Crime | — | — | 4.71 film | 6.41 film |
| Romance | 7.31 film | — | 6.41 film | 6.33 films |
| Horror | — | — | 5.41 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1998The Parent Trap
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Jackie.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2020Emperor
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.
Most recent film
The current state of the argument, as Marley Wells.
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.
16 of 16 films
as April O'Neil / Café Woman 3 (voice)
Directed by Andy Suriano
as Lauren
Directed by Nimisha Mukerji
as Jackie
Directed by Nancy Meyers
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
Delores
Emperor (2020)
Performance score7.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Delores gives Kat Graham a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Marley Wells
Tyler Perry's Duplicity (2025)
Performance score7.3
Tyler Perry's Duplicity asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Marley Wells is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
April O'Neil / Café Woman 3 (voice)
Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie (2022)
Performance score7.2
Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. April O'Neil / Café Woman 3 (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Lauren
Fashionably Yours (2020)
Performance score7.2
Fashionably Yours asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Lauren 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 Delores
Start here. Emperor is the clearest statement of what Kat Graham does — accessible, 99 minutes, and rated 7.6 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.
The Parent Trap (1998)
A deliberate change of key after Emperor — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Fashionably Yours (2020)
Keeps the romance register of The Parent Trap but asks for a colder reading of it.
Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie (2022)
Keeps the comedy register of Fashionably Yours but asks for a colder reading of it.
Tyler Perry's Duplicity (2025)
A deliberate change of key after Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Nancy Meyers
Director
1 film together
Notably The Parent Trap
Burr Steers
Director
1 film together
Notably 17 Again
Benny Boom
Director
1 film together
Notably All Eyez on Me
Monika Mitchell
Director
1 film together
Notably The Knight Before Christmas
George Gallo
Director
1 film together
Notably The Poison Rose
Martin Wood
Director
1 film together
Notably Operation Christmas Drop
Nimisha Mukerji
Director
1 film together
Notably Fashionably Yours
RZA
Director
1 film together
Notably Cut Throat City
Mark Steven Johnson
Director
1 film together
Notably Love in the Villa
Andy Suriano
Director
1 film together
Notably Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie
Tyler Perry
Director
1 film together
Notably Tyler Perry's Duplicity
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Andy Suriano
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The MovieNancy Meyers
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 Parent TrapBenny Boom
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
All Eyez on MeTyler Perry
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Tyler Perry's DuplicityNimisha Mukerji
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fashionably YoursRZA
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Cut Throat CityMartin Wood
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Operation Christmas DropMonika Mitchell
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 Knight Before ChristmasBurr Steers
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
17 AgainMark Steven Johnson
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Love in the VillaGeorge Gallo
Director
1 film together · 4.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Poison RoseSix 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 Parent Trap
as Jackie
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
All Eyez on Me
as Jada Pinkett
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Emperor
as Delores
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Knight Before Christmas
as Abby Sutton (archive footage)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Emperor
as Delores
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 Graham 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
27 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
8 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
Emperor
as Delores
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Cut Throat City
as Demyra
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
All Eyez on Me
as Jada Pinkett
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Collide
as Tamira
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie
as April O'Neil / Café Woman 3 (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
How It Ends
as Samantha
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Emperor
as Delores
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Parent Trap
as Jackie
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
Which Kat Graham performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
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Reference
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