Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#23928
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Kimberley Sustad works on quiet performance 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.
Kimberley Sustad appears in 7 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Kimberley. Three Wise Men and a Baby 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 quiet performance, transformation, screen presence. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, comedy, tv movie. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Lucie Guest, Terry Ingram, David Winning and others, Kimberley Sustad 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.
Three Wise Men and a Baby (2022) as Doctor · Three Wisest Men (2025) as Dr. MacLaren · Christmas at the Catnip Café (2025) as Marilee White
Career snapshot
Ranked #23928 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
7
2013–2025
Career length
12 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.6
Three Wise Men and a Baby
Average Nutevio score
6.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.5
Three Wise Men and a Baby
Most frequent director
Terry Ingram
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Terry Ingram
Most common genre
TV Movie
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 23m
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
6.5
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
2020s
7.1 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Christmas at the Catnip Café, Three Wisest Men, Three Wise Men and a Baby — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
7.1
Across 5 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
7.1
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2010s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Sense, Sensibility & Snowmen, Super Buddies.
Most productive era
2020s
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 | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 7.32 films |
| Comedy | 6.01 film | 7.24 films |
| Romance | 6.81 film | 7.04 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2013Super Buddies
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Joanne.
Career peak
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
7.6 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
2025Three Wisest Men
The current state of the argument, as Dr. MacLaren.
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.
7 of 7 films
as Doctor
Directed by Terry Ingram
as Dr. Marilee White
Directed by David Winning
as Dr. MacLaren
Directed by Terry Ingram
as Marianne Dashwood
Directed by David Winning
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
Doctor
Three Wise Men and a Baby (2022)
Performance score7.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Doctor gives Kimberley Sustad a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Annie Park
Christmas by Starlight (2020)
Performance score7.4
Christmas by Starlight asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Annie Park is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Dr. Marilee White
The Nine Kittens of Christmas (2021)
Performance score7.3
The Nine Kittens of Christmas asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Dr. Marilee White is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Dr. MacLaren
Three Wisest Men (2025)
Performance score7.2
Three Wisest Men asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Dr. MacLaren 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 Doctor
Start here. Three Wise Men and a Baby is the clearest statement of what Kimberley Sustad does — accessible, 84 minutes, and rated 7.6 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Kimberley 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.
Sense, Sensibility & Snowmen (2019)
Keeps the tv movie register of Three Wise Men and a Baby but asks for a colder reading of it.
Christmas by Starlight (2020)
Keeps the romance register of Sense, Sensibility & Snowmen but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Nine Kittens of Christmas (2021)
Keeps the romance register of Christmas by Starlight but asks for a colder reading of it.
Three Wisest Men (2025)
Keeps the romance register of The Nine Kittens of Christmas but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
David Winning
Director
2 films together
Notably The Nine Kittens of Christmas
Terry Ingram
Director
2 films together
Notably Three Wise Men and a Baby
Robert Vince
Director
1 film together
Notably Super Buddies
Lucie Guest
Director
1 film together
Notably Christmas at the Catnip Café
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Terry Ingram
Director
2 films together · 7.4 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Three Wise Men and a BabyDavid Winning
Director
2 films together · 6.8 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The Nine Kittens of ChristmasLucie Guest
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Christmas at the Catnip CaféRobert Vince
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Super BuddiesSix 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
Three Wise Men and a Baby
as Doctor
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
The Nine Kittens of Christmas
as Dr. Marilee White
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Three Wise Men and a Baby
as Doctor
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Three Wise Men and a Baby
as Doctor
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Three Wise Men and a Baby
as Doctor
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. Kimberley Sustad 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.
TV Movie Legend
Awarded
6 catalogue titles in tv movie, 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
Three Wise Men and a Baby
as Doctor
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Three Wise Men and a Baby
as Doctor
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Nine Kittens of Christmas
as Dr. Marilee White
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Three Wise Men and a Baby
as Doctor
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Three Wise Men and a Baby
as Doctor
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Three Wisest Men
as Dr. MacLaren
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Nine Kittens of Christmas
as Dr. Marilee White
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Three Wise Men and a Baby
as Doctor
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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