Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#6486
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Kathy Griffin represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 28 years in, and Kathy is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Kathy Griffin appears in 8 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Kathy. Pulp Fiction is the clearest case: a film rated 8.7 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 comedy, horror, romance. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Bobby Farrelly, Mike Mitchell, Tim Hill and others, Kathy Griffin 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.
Pulp Fiction (1994) as Kathy Griffin · Shrek Forever After (2010) as Dancing Witch / Wagon Witch #1 (voice) · Muppets from Space (1999) as Female Armed Guard
Career snapshot
Ranked #6486 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
8
1994–2022
Career length
28 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.7
Pulp Fiction
Average Nutevio score
5.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.5
Pulp Fiction
Most frequent director
Quentin Tarantino
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Quentin Tarantino
Most common genre
Comedy
8 titles
Average runtime
1h 43m
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
6.4
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
6.7 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Muppets from Space, The Cable Guy, Four Rooms — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
6.7
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
6.6
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. Muppets from Space, The Cable Guy, Four Rooms.
Most productive era
1990s
4 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 | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.01 film | — | — |
| Thriller | 7.32 films | — | — |
| Comedy | 6.74 films | 6.12 films | 3.02 films |
| Crime | 8.71 film | — | — |
| Romance | — | 5.71 film | — |
| Horror | — | — | 4.91 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
1994Pulp Fiction
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Kathy Griffin. 8.7 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
2022Cursed Friends
The current state of the argument, as Stacy Friendship.
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.
8 of 8 films
as Kathy Griffin
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
as Stacy Friendship
Directed by Unknown
as Kathy Griffin
Directed by Bobby Farrelly
as Dancing Witch / Wagon Witch #1 (voice)
Directed by Mike Mitchell
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
Kathy Griffin
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Performance score8.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Kathy Griffin gives Kathy Griffin a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Stacy Friendship
Cursed Friends (2022)
Performance score6.5
Cursed Friends asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Stacy Friendship is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Self - Host
Women Behind Bars (2020)
Performance score6.5
Women Behind Bars asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self - Host is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Kathy Griffin
Hall Pass (2011)
Performance score6.5
Hall Pass asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Kathy Griffin 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 Kathy Griffin
Start here. Pulp Fiction is the clearest statement of what Kathy Griffin does — accessible, 154 minutes, and rated 8.7 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Kathy 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.
Shrek Forever After (2010)
Keeps the comedy register of Pulp Fiction but asks for a colder reading of it.
Hall Pass (2011)
Keeps the comedy register of Shrek Forever After but asks for a colder reading of it.
Women Behind Bars (2020)
Keeps the comedy register of Hall Pass but asks for a colder reading of it.
Cursed Friends (2022)
Same director as Women Behind Bars, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Quentin Tarantino
Director
2 films together
Notably Pulp Fiction
Ben Stiller
Director
1 film together
Notably The Cable Guy
Tim Hill
Director
1 film together
Notably Muppets from Space
Mike Mitchell
Director
1 film together
Notably Shrek Forever After
Bobby Farrelly
Director
1 film together
Notably Hall Pass
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Quentin Tarantino
Director
2 films together · 7.3 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Pulp FictionMike 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
Shrek Forever AfterTim Hill
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Muppets from SpaceBen Stiller
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Cable GuyBobby Farrelly
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hall PassSix 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
Pulp Fiction
as Kathy Griffin
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Shrek Forever After
as Dancing Witch / Wagon Witch #1 (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
Pulp Fiction
as Kathy Griffin
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Hall Pass
as Kathy Griffin
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Pulp Fiction
as Kathy Griffin
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. Kathy Griffin 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
28 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
Pulp Fiction
as Kathy Griffin
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Pulp Fiction
as Kathy Griffin
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Shrek Forever After
as Dancing Witch / Wagon Witch #1 (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Pulp Fiction
as Kathy Griffin
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Pulp Fiction
as Kathy Griffin
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Muppets from Space
as Female Armed Guard
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Shrek Forever After
as Dancing Witch / Wagon Witch #1 (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Pulp Fiction
as Kathy Griffin
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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Harvey Keitel
Works with the same directors — Quentin Tarantino
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Christopher Walken
Works with the same directors — Quentin Tarantino
Michael Caine
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Have your say
Community
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