Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3159
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Lily Tomlin represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 51 years in, and Lily is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Lily Tomlin appears in 25 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Lily. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse 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 documentary, comedy, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Morgan Neville, Kyle Marvin, Paul Weitz and others, Lily Tomlin 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.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) as Aunt May (voice) · Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love (2023) as Self - Guest · Short Cuts (1993) as Doreen Piggot
Career snapshot
Ranked #3159 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
25
1975–2026
Career length
51 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.7
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Average Nutevio score
5.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.4
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Most frequent director
Paul Weitz
3 films together
Longest collaboration
3×
With Paul Weitz
Most common genre
Comedy
19 titles
Average runtime
1h 36m
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
6.7
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
1970s
7.0 average MV
The 1970s are where the work and the material meet. Nashville — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1970s
7.0
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1970s
7.3
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1970s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Nashville.
Most productive era
2020s
9 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 | 1970s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.01 film | 6.82 films | 6.22 films | 6.02 films | 6.12 films |
| Action | — | — | — | 8.71 film | — |
| Comedy | 7.01 film | 6.64 films | 6.16 films | 5.83 films | 6.15 films |
| Romance | — | — | 6.31 film | 5.61 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1975Nashville
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Linnea Reese.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2018Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
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
2026Lorne
The current state of the argument, as Self.
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.
25 of 25 films
as Aunt May (voice)
Directed by Peter Ramsey
as Self - Guest
Directed by Paul Miller
as Doreen Piggot
Directed by Robert Altman
as Janet
Directed by Jon Turteltaub
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
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The defining work
#1
Aunt May (voice)
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Performance score8.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Aunt May (voice) gives Lily Tomlin a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Self - Guest
Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love (2023)
Performance score8.3
Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self - Guest is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Elle
Grandma (2015)
Performance score7.1
Grandma asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Elle is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Doreen Piggot
Short Cuts (1993)
Performance score7.1
Short Cuts asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Doreen Piggot 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 Aunt May (voice)
Start here. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is the clearest statement of what Lily Tomlin does — accessible, 117 minutes, and rated 8.7 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.
Short Cuts (1993)
A deliberate change of key after Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Kid (2000)
Keeps the comedy register of Short Cuts but asks for a colder reading of it.
Grandma (2015)
Keeps the comedy register of The Kid but asks for a colder reading of it.
Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love (2023)
Keeps the comedy register of Grandma but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Robert Altman
Director
3 films together
Notably Short Cuts
Paul Weitz
Director
3 films together
Notably Grandma
David O. Russell
Director
2 films together
Notably I ♥ Huckabees
Franco Zeffirelli
Director
1 film together
Notably Tea with Mussolini
Jon Turteltaub
Director
1 film together
Notably The Kid
Jake Kasdan
Director
1 film together
Notably Orange County
John A. Davis
Director
1 film together
Notably The Ant Bully
Peter Ramsey
Director
1 film together
Notably Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Linda Mendoza
Director
1 film together
Notably Stand Out: An LGBTQ+ Celebration
Paul Miller
Director
1 film together
Notably Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love
Kyle Marvin
Director
1 film together
Notably 80 for Brady
Morgan Neville
Director
1 film together
Notably Lorne
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Robert Altman
Director
3 films together · 6.8 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Short CutsPaul Weitz
Director
3 films together · 6.0 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
GrandmaDavid O. Russell
Director
2 films together · 6.3 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
I ♥ HuckabeesPeter Ramsey
Director
1 film together · 8.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-VersePaul Miller
Director
1 film together · 8.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + LoveMorgan Neville
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
LorneJon Turteltaub
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The KidFranco Zeffirelli
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Tea with MussoliniKyle Marvin
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
80 for BradyJake Kasdan
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Orange CountyJohn A. Davis
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Ant BullyLinda Mendoza
Director
1 film together · 4.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Stand Out: An LGBTQ+ CelebrationSix 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
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
as Aunt May (voice)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Admission
as Susannah
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
as Aunt May (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Lorne
as Self
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
as Aunt May (voice)
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 Tomlin 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
51 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
19 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
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
as Aunt May (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
as Aunt May (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Admission
as Susannah
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Pink Panther 2
as Mrs. Berenger
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
as Aunt May (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
as Aunt May (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Tea with Mussolini
as Georgina "Georgie" Rockwell
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
as Aunt May (voice)
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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