Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#5917
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Keeley Hawes represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 26 years in, and Keeley is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Keeley Hawes appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Keeley. To Olivia is the clearest case: a film rated 6.9 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 tv movie, drama, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Philip Martin, Philippa Lowthorpe, Ben Wheatley and others, Keeley Hawes 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.
To Olivia (2021) as Patricia Neal · The Bank Job (2008) as Wendy Leather · Death at a Funeral (2007) as Jane
Career snapshot
Ranked #5917 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
1998–2024
Career length
26 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.9
To Olivia
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
6.9
Death at a Funeral
Most frequent director
Ben Wheatley
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Ben Wheatley
Most common genre
Drama
8 titles
Average runtime
1h 45m
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
6.4
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
2000s
6.7 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. The Bank Job, Flashbacks of a Fool, Death at a Funeral — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.7
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.7
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 Avengers.
Most productive era
2020s
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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.73 films | 5.61 film | 6.54 films |
| Action | 4.51 film | — | — | — |
| Thriller | 4.51 film | 6.91 film | — | 6.31 film |
| Comedy | 4.51 film | 6.91 film | — | 6.41 film |
| Crime | — | 6.91 film | — | — |
| Romance | — | — | — | 6.31 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1998The Avengers
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Tamara.
Highest rated performance
6.9 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
2021To Olivia
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2024Scoop
The current state of the argument, as Amanda Thirsk.
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.
10 of 10 films
as Wendy Leather
Directed by Roger Donaldson
as Julia Morley
Directed by Philippa Lowthorpe
as Amanda Thirsk
Directed by Philip Martin
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
Patricia Neal
To Olivia (2021)
Performance score7.3
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Patricia Neal gives Keeley Hawes a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Jane
Death at a Funeral (2007)
Performance score7.1
Death at a Funeral asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Jane is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Wendy Leather
The Bank Job (2008)
Performance score6.8
The Bank Job asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Wendy Leather is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Julia Morley
Misbehaviour (2020)
Performance score6.6
Misbehaviour asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Julia Morley 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 Patricia Neal
Start here. To Olivia is the clearest statement of what Keeley Hawes does — accessible, 99 minutes, and rated 6.9 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Keeley 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.
Death at a Funeral (2007)
Keeps the drama register of To Olivia but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Bank Job (2008)
Keeps the drama register of Death at a Funeral but asks for a colder reading of it.
Misbehaviour (2020)
Keeps the drama register of The Bank Job but asks for a colder reading of it.
Scoop (2024)
Keeps the drama register of Misbehaviour but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Ben Wheatley
Director
2 films together
Notably Rebecca
Jeremiah S. Chechik
Director
1 film together
Notably The Avengers
Frank Oz
Director
1 film together
Notably Death at a Funeral
Roger Donaldson
Director
1 film together
Notably The Bank Job
Philippa Lowthorpe
Director
1 film together
Notably Misbehaviour
Philip Martin
Director
1 film together
Notably Scoop
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Ben Wheatley
Director
2 films together · 5.9 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
RebeccaRoger Donaldson
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Bank JobFrank Oz
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Death at a FuneralPhilippa Lowthorpe
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
MisbehaviourPhilip Martin
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
ScoopJeremiah S. Chechik
Director
1 film together · 4.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The AvengersSix 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 Bank Job
as Wendy Leather
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Rebecca
as Beatrice
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Death at a Funeral
as Jane
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Bank Job
as Wendy Leather
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
To Olivia
as Patricia Neal
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. Keeley Hawes 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
26 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
8 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
Death at a Funeral
as Jane
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Bank Job
as Wendy Leather
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Rebecca
as Beatrice
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Rebecca
as Beatrice
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Death at a Funeral
as Jane
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Avengers
as Tamara
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Misbehaviour
as Julia Morley
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Avengers
as Tamara
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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Tom Hanks
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Bonnie Hunt
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Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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