Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#21013
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Liz Smith represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 31 years in, and Liz is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Liz Smith appears in 8 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Liz. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory 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 fantasy, adventure, family. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Tim Burton, Nick Park, Roman Polanski and others, Liz Smith 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.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) as Grandma Georgina · Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) as Mrs. Mulch (voice) · The Duellists (1977) as Fortune Teller
Career snapshot
Ranked #21013 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
8
1977–2008
Career length
31 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.2
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Average Nutevio score
6.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.2
The Duellists
Most frequent director
Tim Burton
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Tim Burton
Most common genre
Family
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 51m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.0
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. The Duellists — 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
7.2
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. The Duellists.
Most productive era
2000s
4 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 | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.01 film | 6.51 film | — | 6.81 film |
| Comedy | — | — | — | 7.22 films |
| Crime | — | — | — | 6.81 film |
| Romance | — | 6.51 film | 6.11 film | — |
| Horror | — | — | 6.11 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1977The Duellists
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Fortune Teller.
Highest rated performance
2005Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
7.2 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
2005Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2008City of Ember
The current state of the argument, as Granny.
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.
8 of 8 films
as Mrs. Mulch (voice)
Directed by Nick Park
as Grandma Georgina
Directed by Tim Burton
as Fortune Teller
Directed by Ridley Scott
as Old Woman
Directed by Roman Polanski
as Granny
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
Mrs. Mulch (voice)
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Mrs. Mulch (voice) gives Liz Smith a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Grandma Georgina
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
Performance score7.1
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Grandma Georgina is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Fortune Teller
The Duellists (1977)
Performance score6.9
The Duellists asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Fortune Teller is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Old Woman
Oliver Twist (2005)
Performance score6.7
Oliver Twist asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Old Woman 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 Mrs. Mulch (voice)
Start here. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is the clearest statement of what Liz Smith does — accessible, 85 minutes, and rated 7.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Liz 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.
The Duellists (1977)
A deliberate change of key after Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
A deliberate change of key after The Duellists — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Oliver Twist (2005)
Keeps the family register of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory but asks for a colder reading of it.
City of Ember (2008)
Keeps the family register of Oliver Twist but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Ridley Scott
Director
1 film together
Notably The Duellists
Karel Reisz
Director
1 film together
Notably The French Lieutenant's Woman
Lewis Gilbert
Director
1 film together
Notably Haunted
Nick Willing
Director
1 film together
Notably Alice in Wonderland
Roman Polanski
Director
1 film together
Notably Oliver Twist
Nick Park
Director
1 film together
Notably Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Tim Burton
Director
1 film together
Notably Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Tim Burton
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Charlie and the Chocolate FactoryNick Park
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-RabbitRidley Scott
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 DuellistsRoman Polanski
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Oliver TwistKarel Reisz
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 French Lieutenant's WomanNick Willing
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Alice in WonderlandLewis Gilbert
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
HauntedSix 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
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
as Grandma Georgina
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 French Lieutenant's Woman
as Mrs. Fairley
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 Duellists
as Fortune Teller
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Duellists
as Fortune Teller
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
as Mrs. Mulch (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. Liz Smith 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.
Family Legend
Awarded
5 catalogue titles in family, 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
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
as Grandma Georgina
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Haunted
as Old gypsy woman
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The French Lieutenant's Woman
as Mrs. Fairley
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Haunted
as Old gypsy woman
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
as Mrs. Mulch (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
as Mrs. Mulch (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
as Mrs. Mulch (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
as Grandma Georgina
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Harry Dean Stanton
Works with the same directors — Ridley Scott
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Robert Downey Jr.
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
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Community
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Reference
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