Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#22020
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Lisa Long 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.
Lisa Long appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Lisa. Gothic Springs is the clearest case: a film rated 8.2 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, comedy, tv movie. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Floria Sigismondi, Peyton Reed, Gregg Araki and others, Lisa Long 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.
Gothic Springs (2019) as Susan · Cast Away (2000) as Lisa Madden · Mysterious Skin (2005) as Mrs. Lackey
Career snapshot
Ranked #22020 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
2000–2023
Career length
23 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.2
Gothic Springs
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.2
Gothic Springs
Most frequent director
Floria Sigismondi
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Floria Sigismondi
Most common genre
Drama
5 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
6.5
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
2010s
7.3 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Gothic Springs, The Runaways — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.3
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
7.3
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. Yes Man, Mysterious Skin, Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde.
Most productive era
2000s
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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.82 films | 7.32 films | 5.01 film |
| Thriller | — | — | 5.01 film |
| Comedy | 6.33 films | — | 5.51 film |
| Romance | 6.33 films | — | 5.51 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2000Cast Away
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Lisa Madden.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2019Gothic Springs
8.2 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
2023The Wedding in the Hamptons
The current state of the argument, as Eileen Stratton.
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.
9 of 9 films
as Susan
Directed by Unknown
as Lisa Madden
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
as Mrs. Lackey
Directed by Gregg Araki
as Airline Representative
Directed by Peyton Reed
as Eileen Stratton
Directed by Unknown
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
Susan
Gothic Springs (2019)
Performance score7.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Susan gives Lisa Long a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Lisa Madden
Cast Away (2000)
Performance score7.6
Cast Away asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Lisa Madden is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Mrs. Lackey
Mysterious Skin (2005)
Performance score7.5
Mysterious Skin asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mrs. Lackey is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Airline Representative
Yes Man (2008)
Performance score6.7
Yes Man asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Airline Representative 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 Susan
Start here. Gothic Springs is the clearest statement of what Lisa Long does — accessible, 12 minutes, and rated 8.2 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Lisa 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.
Cast Away (2000)
Keeps the drama register of Gothic Springs but asks for a colder reading of it.
Mysterious Skin (2005)
Keeps the drama register of Cast Away but asks for a colder reading of it.
Yes Man (2008)
A deliberate change of key after Mysterious Skin — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Wedding in the Hamptons (2023)
Keeps the romance register of Yes Man but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Nancy Meyers
Director
1 film together
Notably What Women Want
Robert Zemeckis
Director
1 film together
Notably Cast Away
Gregg Araki
Director
1 film together
Notably Mysterious Skin
Peyton Reed
Director
1 film together
Notably Yes Man
Floria Sigismondi
Director
1 film together
Notably The Runaways
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Robert Zemeckis
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Cast AwayGregg Araki
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mysterious SkinPeyton Reed
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Yes ManFloria Sigismondi
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 RunawaysNancy Meyers
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
What Women WantSix 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
Cast Away
as Lisa Madden
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 Runaways
as Sandy West's Mom
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Gothic Springs
as Susan
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Yes Man
as Airline Representative
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Gothic Springs
as Susan
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. Lisa Long 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
23 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
5 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
Gothic Springs
as Susan
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Gothic Springs
as Susan
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Runaways
as Sandy West's Mom
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Mysterious Skin
as Mrs. Lackey
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Cast Away
as Lisa Madden
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Cast Away
as Lisa Madden
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Runaways
as Sandy West's Mom
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Cast Away
as Lisa Madden
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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