Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#4978
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
LisaGay Hamilton represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 31 years in, and LisaGay is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
LisaGay Hamilton appears in 16 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without LisaGay. Twelve Monkeys is the clearest case: a film rated 7.7 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 drama, history, thriller. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Elegance Bratton, Rob Savage, Adam McKay and others, LisaGay Hamilton 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.
Twelve Monkeys (1995) as Teddy · Beautiful Boy (2018) as Rose · Jackie Brown (1997) as Sheronda
Career snapshot
Ranked #4978 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
16
1995–2026
Career length
31 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.7
Twelve Monkeys
Average Nutevio score
6.1
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.6
Twelve Monkeys
Most frequent director
Elegance Bratton
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Elegance Bratton
Most common genre
Drama
10 titles
Average runtime
1h 46m
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
1990s
7.0 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. True Crime, Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, Jackie Brown — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
7.0
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
6.9
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1990s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. True Crime, Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, Jackie Brown.
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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.02 films | 6.63 films | 7.03 films | 3.02 films |
| Action | — | 6.41 film | — | — |
| Thriller | 7.04 films | 5.83 films | — | 0.01 film |
| Comedy | — | — | 7.01 film | 6.11 film |
| Crime | 7.02 films | — | — | — |
| Romance | — | 6.61 film | 6.31 film | 6.11 film |
| Horror | 6.21 film | — | — | 6.41 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
1995Twelve Monkeys
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Teddy. 7.7 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
2026By Any Means
The current state of the argument.
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.
16 of 16 films
as Teddy
Directed by Terry Gilliam
as Sheronda
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
as Bonnie Beechum
Directed by Clint Eastwood
as Condoleezza Rice
Directed by Adam McKay
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
Teddy
Twelve Monkeys (1995)
Performance score7.5
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Teddy gives LisaGay Hamilton a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Rose
Beautiful Boy (2018)
Performance score7.4
Beautiful Boy asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Rose is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Sheronda
Jackie Brown (1997)
Performance score7.2
Jackie Brown asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Sheronda is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Bonnie Beechum
True Crime (1999)
Performance score7.0
True Crime asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Bonnie Beechum 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 Teddy
Start here. Twelve Monkeys is the clearest statement of what LisaGay Hamilton does — accessible, 129 minutes, and rated 7.7 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet LisaGay 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.
Jackie Brown (1997)
Keeps the thriller register of Twelve Monkeys but asks for a colder reading of it.
True Crime (1999)
Keeps the crime register of Jackie Brown but asks for a colder reading of it.
Beautiful Boy (2018)
Keeps the drama register of True Crime but asks for a colder reading of it.
Vice (2018)
Keeps the drama register of Beautiful Boy but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Terry Gilliam
Director
1 film together
Notably Twelve Monkeys
Quentin Tarantino
Director
1 film together
Notably Jackie Brown
Steve Miner
Director
1 film together
Notably Halloween H20: 20 Years Later
Clint Eastwood
Director
1 film together
Notably True Crime
Jonathan Demme
Director
1 film together
Notably The Truth About Charlie
Phil Alden Robinson
Director
1 film together
Notably The Sum of All Fears
Rodrigo García
Director
1 film together
Notably Mother and Child
Joe Wright
Director
1 film together
Notably The Soloist
Daniel Barnz
Director
1 film together
Notably Beastly
Adam McKay
Director
1 film together
Notably Vice
Rob Savage
Director
1 film together
Notably The Boogeyman
Elegance Bratton
Director
1 film together
Notably By Any Means
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Terry Gilliam
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Twelve MonkeysQuentin Tarantino
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Jackie BrownAdam 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
ViceJoe Wright
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The SoloistRodrigo García
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mother and ChildClint Eastwood
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
True CrimeRob Savage
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The BoogeymanPhil Alden Robinson
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Sum of All FearsDaniel Barnz
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BeastlySteve Miner
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Halloween H20: 20 Years LaterJonathan Demme
Director
1 film together · 4.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Truth About CharlieElegance Bratton
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
By Any MeansSix 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
Twelve Monkeys
as Teddy
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 Soloist
as Jennifer Ayers
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Twelve Monkeys
as Teddy
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Sum of All Fears
as Capt. Lorna Shiro
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Twelve Monkeys
as Teddy
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. LisaGay Hamilton 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
31 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
10 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
Twelve Monkeys
as Teddy
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Twelve Monkeys
as Teddy
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Beastly
as Zola Davies
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
True Crime
as Bonnie Beechum
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Twelve Monkeys
as Teddy
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Sum of All Fears
as Capt. Lorna Shiro
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Blue Eyed Girl
as Catherine
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Halloween H20: 20 Years Later
as Shirl (voice)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Ted Levine
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: drama and fantasy
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Harvey Keitel
Works with the same directors — Quentin Tarantino
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Have your say
Community
Which LisaGay Hamilton performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
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Reference
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