Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3197
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Lily Rabe 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.
Lily Rabe appears in 14 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Lily. The Great Lillian Hall is the clearest case: a film rated 7.0 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, quiet performance, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, fantasy, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Kogonada, Michael Cristofer, Hamish Linklater and others, Lily Rabe 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 Great Lillian Hall (2024) as Margaret Tanner · Vice (2018) as Liz Cheney · Mona Lisa Smile (2003) as Art History Student
Career snapshot
Ranked #3197 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
14
2003–2025
Career length
22 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.0
The Great Lillian Hall
Average Nutevio score
6.0
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.0
The Great Lillian Hall
Most frequent director
Kogonada
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Kogonada
Most common genre
Drama
11 titles
Average runtime
1h 42m
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
2010s
6.5 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Fractured, Finding Steve McQueen, Vice — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.5
Across 6 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.5
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. What Just Happened, No Reservations, Mona Lisa Smile.
Most productive era
2010s
6 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 | 6.33 films | 6.84 films | 6.34 films |
| Thriller | — | 6.53 films | — |
| Comedy | 6.12 films | 6.82 films | 5.51 film |
| Crime | — | 6.11 film | — |
| Romance | 6.82 films | 6.11 film | 6.21 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2003Mona Lisa Smile
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Art History Student.
Career peak
2016Miss Stevens
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
2018Vice
7.0 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
The current state of the argument, as Self (voice).
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 Joanne Monroe
Directed by Brad Anderson
as Rachel Stevens
Directed by Unknown
as Margaret Tanner
Directed by Michael Cristofer
as Liz Cheney
Directed by Adam McKay
as Joan Fischer
Directed by Edward Zwick
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
Joanne Monroe
Fractured (2019)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Joanne Monroe gives Lily Rabe a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Rachel Stevens
Miss Stevens (2016)
Performance score7.2
Miss Stevens asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Rachel Stevens is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Margaret Tanner
The Great Lillian Hall (2024)
Performance score7.1
The Great Lillian Hall asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Margaret Tanner is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Liz Cheney
Vice (2018)
Performance score6.9
Vice asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Liz Cheney 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 Joanne Monroe
Start here. Fractured is the clearest statement of what Lily Rabe does — accessible, 99 minutes, and rated 6.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Lily 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.
Pawn Sacrifice (2015)
Keeps the drama register of Fractured but asks for a colder reading of it.
Miss Stevens (2016)
Keeps the drama register of Pawn Sacrifice but asks for a colder reading of it.
Vice (2018)
Keeps the comedy register of Miss Stevens but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Great Lillian Hall (2024)
Keeps the drama register of Vice but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Mike Newell
Director
1 film together
Notably Mona Lisa Smile
Barry Levinson
Director
1 film together
Notably What Just Happened
Andrew Jarecki
Director
1 film together
Notably All Good Things
Edward Zwick
Director
1 film together
Notably Pawn Sacrifice
Adam McKay
Director
1 film together
Notably Vice
Mark Steven Johnson
Director
1 film together
Notably Finding Steve McQueen
Brad Anderson
Director
1 film together
Notably Fractured
George Clooney
Director
1 film together
Notably The Tender Bar
Hamish Linklater
Director
1 film together
Notably Downtown Owl
Michael Cristofer
Director
1 film together
Notably The Great Lillian Hall
Kogonada
Director
1 film together
Notably A Big Bold Beautiful Journey
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Michael Cristofer
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 Great Lillian HallAdam McKay
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
ViceMike Newell
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mona Lisa SmileBrad Anderson
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
FracturedEdward Zwick
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Pawn SacrificeGeorge Clooney
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Tender BarKogonada
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Big Bold Beautiful JourneyMark Steven Johnson
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Finding Steve McQueenAndrew Jarecki
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
All Good ThingsHamish Linklater
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Downtown OwlBarry Levinson
Director
1 film together · 5.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
What Just HappenedSix 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
Vice
as Liz Cheney
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Mona Lisa Smile
as Art History Student
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Mona Lisa Smile
as Art History Student
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Mona Lisa Smile
as Art History Student
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Fractured
as Joanne Monroe
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. Lily Rabe 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
22 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
11 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
The Great Lillian Hall
as Margaret Tanner
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Great Lillian Hall
as Margaret Tanner
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey
as Sarah's Mother
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Great Lillian Hall
as Margaret Tanner
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Great Lillian Hall
as Margaret Tanner
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Great Lillian Hall
as Margaret Tanner
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
No Reservations
as Bernadette
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey
as Sarah's Mother
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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