Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3563
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Kathleen Quinlan represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 53 years in, and Kathleen is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Kathleen Quinlan appears in 14 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Kathleen. Apollo 13 is the clearest case: a film rated 7.5 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 science fiction, drama, western. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Kevin Costner, Edward James Olmos, Paul Weiland and others, Kathleen Quinlan 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.
Apollo 13 (1995) as Marilyn Lovell · Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 2 (2024) · The Doors (1991) as Patricia Kennealy
Career snapshot
Ranked #3563 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
14
1973–2026
Career length
53 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.5
Apollo 13
Average Nutevio score
5.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.5
Apollo 13
Most frequent director
Kevin Costner
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Kevin Costner
Most common genre
Drama
10 titles
Average runtime
1h 47m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.9
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
6.7
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
6.9 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. A Civil Action, Event Horizon, Breakdown — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
6.9
Across 5 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1970s
7.0
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. American Graffiti.
Most productive era
1990s
5 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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.91 film | 7.04 films | — | 5.53 films | 3.52 films |
| Action | — | 6.91 film | — | — | — |
| Thriller | — | 6.91 film | — | 5.23 films | — |
| Comedy | 6.91 film | — | 6.51 film | 5.02 films | — |
| Crime | — | 6.91 film | — | — | — |
| Romance | — | — | 6.51 film | — | — |
| Horror | — | 6.71 film | — | 6.01 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Peg.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1995Apollo 13
7.5 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
2026Okay
The current state of the argument, as Loretta.
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.
14 of 14 films
as Marilyn Lovell
Directed by Ron Howard
as Amy Taylor
Directed by Jonathan Mostow
as Peters
Directed by Paul W. S. Anderson
Directed by Kevin Costner
as Patricia Kennealy
Directed by Oliver Stone
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
Marilyn Lovell
Apollo 13 (1995)
Performance score7.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Marilyn Lovell gives Kathleen Quinlan a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Amy Taylor
Breakdown (1997)
Performance score7.3
Breakdown asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Amy Taylor is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Peters
Event Horizon (1997)
Performance score7.1
Event Horizon asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Peters is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 2
Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 2 (2024)
Performance score6.9
Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 2 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. The role 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 Marilyn Lovell
Start here. Apollo 13 is the clearest statement of what Kathleen Quinlan does — accessible, 140 minutes, and rated 7.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Kathleen 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 Doors (1991)
Keeps the drama register of Apollo 13 but asks for a colder reading of it.
Breakdown (1997)
Keeps the drama register of The Doors but asks for a colder reading of it.
Event Horizon (1997)
Keeps the mystery register of Breakdown but asks for a colder reading of it.
Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 2 (2024)
A deliberate change of key after Event Horizon — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
George Lucas
Director
1 film together
Notably American Graffiti
Oliver Stone
Director
1 film together
Notably The Doors
Ron Howard
Director
1 film together
Notably Apollo 13
Jonathan Mostow
Director
1 film together
Notably Breakdown
Paul W. S. Anderson
Director
1 film together
Notably Event Horizon
Steven Zaillian
Director
1 film together
Notably A Civil Action
Paul Weiland
Director
1 film together
Notably Made of Honor
Edward James Olmos
Director
1 film together
Notably The Devil Has a Name
Kevin Costner
Director
1 film together
Notably Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 2
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Ron Howard
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Apollo 13Kevin Costner
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 2Oliver Stone
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 DoorsJonathan Mostow
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BreakdownGeorge Lucas
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
American GraffitiPaul W. S. Anderson
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Event HorizonPaul Weiland
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Made of HonorSteven Zaillian
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Civil ActionEdward James Olmos
Director
1 film together · 5.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Devil Has a NameSix 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
Apollo 13
as Marilyn Lovell
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Apollo 13
as Marilyn Lovell
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Apollo 13
as Marilyn Lovell
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 2
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Apollo 13
as Marilyn Lovell
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. Kathleen Quinlan 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
53 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
10 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
Apollo 13
as Marilyn Lovell
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Breakdown
as Amy Taylor
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Apollo 13
as Marilyn Lovell
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Event Horizon
as Peters
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Breakdown
as Amy Taylor
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Breakdown
as Amy Taylor
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Apollo 13
as Marilyn Lovell
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Event Horizon
as Peters
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
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Reference
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