Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#4255
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Kimberly Williams-Paisley works on versatility 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.
Kimberly Williams-Paisley appears in 13 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Kimberly. The Christmas Chronicles is the clearest case: a film rated 7.2 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 adventure, family, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Stephen Herek, Jon Erwin, Sean McNamara and others, Kimberly Williams-Paisley 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.
The Christmas Chronicles (2018) as Claire Pierce · Darrow & Darrow: Witness to Murder (2019) as Claire Darrow · Jesus Revolution (2023) as Charlene
Career snapshot
Ranked #4255 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
13
2006–2023
Career length
17 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.2
The Christmas Chronicles
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.2
The Christmas Chronicles
Most frequent director
Sean McNamara
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Sean McNamara
Most common genre
Drama
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 32m
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
6.3
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
6.9 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. We Are Marshall — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.9
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.9
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2000s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. We Are Marshall.
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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.91 film | 6.32 films | 5.94 films |
| Thriller | — | 7.01 film | 5.31 film |
| Comedy | — | 6.62 films | 6.13 films |
| Crime | — | 7.01 film | — |
| Romance | — | — | 6.04 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2006We Are Marshall
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Sandy Lengyel.
Highest rated performance
7.2 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
2019Darrow & Darrow: Witness to Murder
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2023Jesus Revolution
The current state of the argument, as Charlene.
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.
13 of 13 films
as Claire Darrow
Directed by Michael Robison
as Claire Pierce
Directed by Unknown
as Charlene
Directed by Jon Erwin
as Spirit of Christmas Present
Directed by Dawn Wilkinson
as Sandy Lengyel
Directed by McG
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
Claire Darrow
Darrow & Darrow: Witness to Murder (2019)
Performance score7.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Claire Darrow gives Kimberly Williams-Paisley a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Claire Pierce
The Christmas Chronicles (2018)
Performance score7.3
The Christmas Chronicles asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Claire Pierce is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Charlene
Jesus Revolution (2023)
Performance score7.1
Jesus Revolution asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Charlene is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Spirit of Christmas Present
A Nashville Christmas Carol (2020)
Performance score6.9
A Nashville Christmas Carol asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Spirit of Christmas Present 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 Claire Darrow
Start here. Darrow & Darrow: Witness to Murder is the clearest statement of what Kimberly Williams-Paisley does — accessible, 80 minutes, and rated 7.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Kimberly 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.
We Are Marshall (2006)
Keeps the drama register of Darrow & Darrow: Witness to Murder but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Christmas Chronicles (2018)
A deliberate change of key after We Are Marshall — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
A Nashville Christmas Carol (2020)
A deliberate change of key after The Christmas Chronicles — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Jesus Revolution (2023)
A deliberate change of key after A Nashville Christmas Carol — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Sean McNamara
Director
2 films together
Notably Sister Swap: Christmas in the City
McG
Director
1 film together
Notably We Are Marshall
Michael Robison
Director
1 film together
Notably Darrow & Darrow: Witness to Murder
Dawn Wilkinson
Director
1 film together
Notably A Nashville Christmas Carol
Chris Columbus
Director
1 film together
Notably The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two
Jon Erwin
Director
1 film together
Notably Jesus Revolution
Stephen Herek
Director
1 film together
Notably Dog Gone
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Sean McNamara
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
Sister Swap: Christmas in the CityMichael Robison
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Darrow & Darrow: Witness to MurderJon Erwin
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Jesus RevolutionMcG
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
We Are MarshallDawn Wilkinson
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Nashville Christmas CarolChris Columbus
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Christmas Chronicles: Part TwoStephen Herek
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Dog GoneSix 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
We Are Marshall
as Sandy Lengyel
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
We Are Marshall
as Sandy Lengyel
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
The Christmas Chronicles
as Claire Pierce
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
We Are Marshall
as Sandy Lengyel
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Darrow & Darrow: Witness to Murder
as Claire Darrow
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. Kimberly Williams-Paisley 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
7 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
Darrow & Darrow: Witness to Murder
as Claire Darrow
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Darrow & Darrow: Witness to Murder
as Claire Darrow
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Violent Heart
as Helen
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Darrow & Darrow: Witness to Murder
as Claire Darrow
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Christmas Chronicles
as Claire Pierce
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Dog Gone
as Ginny Marshall
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip
as Samantha
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Jesus Revolution
as Charlene
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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