Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#5287
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Lorraine Toussaint represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 33 years in, and Lorraine is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Lorraine Toussaint appears in 13 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Lorraine. Hamlet is the clearest case: a film rated 9.5 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 science fiction, comedy, tv movie. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Troy Quane, Julie Taymor, Jonathan Levine and others, Lorraine Toussaint 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.
Hamlet (2024) as Gertrude · Big City Greens the Movie: Spacecation (2024) as Rashida Remington (voice) · Nimona (2023) as Queen Valerin (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #5287 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
13
1991–2024
Career length
33 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
9.5
Hamlet
Average Nutevio score
6.3
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
9.5
Hamlet
Most frequent director
Troy Quane
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Troy Quane
Most common genre
Drama
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 48m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.9
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
2000s
6.7 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. The Soloist — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.7
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.7
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. Point of No Return, Hudson Hawk.
Most productive era
2020s
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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.71 film | 6.52 films | 7.43 films |
| Action | 6.02 films | — | — | 7.61 film |
| Thriller | 6.21 film | — | 6.01 film | — |
| Comedy | 5.71 film | — | 6.11 film | 7.71 film |
| Crime | 6.21 film | — | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1991Hudson Hawk
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Almond Joy.
First Nutevio masterpiece · Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2024Hamlet
The first film here to clear 9.0 on our scale — a threshold fewer than one film in ten reaches. 9.5 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. The current state of the argument, as Gertrude.
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.
13 of 13 films
as Queen Valerin (voice)
Directed by Troy Quane
as Rashida Remington (voice)
Directed by Unknown
as Amelia Boynton
Directed by Ava DuVernay
as Flo Ayers
Directed by Joe Wright
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
Gertrude
Hamlet (2024)
Performance score9.3
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Gertrude gives Lorraine Toussaint a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Queen Valerin (voice)
Nimona (2023)
Performance score7.7
Nimona asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Queen Valerin (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Rashida Remington (voice)
Big City Greens the Movie: Spacecation (2024)
Performance score7.5
Big City Greens the Movie: Spacecation asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Rashida Remington (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Amelia Boynton
Selma (2014)
Performance score7.2
Selma asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Amelia Boynton 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 Gertrude
Start here. Hamlet is the clearest statement of what Lorraine Toussaint does — accessible, 154 minutes, and rated 9.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Lorraine 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 Soloist (2009)
Keeps the drama register of Hamlet but asks for a colder reading of it.
Selma (2014)
Keeps the drama register of The Soloist but asks for a colder reading of it.
Nimona (2023)
A deliberate change of key after Selma — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Big City Greens the Movie: Spacecation (2024)
Keeps the science fiction register of Nimona but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Michael Lehmann
Director
1 film together
Notably Hudson Hawk
John Badham
Director
1 film together
Notably Point of No Return
Joe Wright
Director
1 film together
Notably The Soloist
Ava DuVernay
Director
1 film together
Notably Selma
Jonathan Levine
Director
1 film together
Notably The Night Before
Julie Taymor
Director
1 film together
Notably The Glorias
Troy Quane
Director
1 film together
Notably Nimona
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Troy Quane
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
NimonaAva DuVernay
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SelmaJoe 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 SoloistJulie Taymor
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 GloriasJohn Badham
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Point of No ReturnJonathan Levine
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Night BeforeMichael Lehmann
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hudson HawkSix 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
Hamlet
as Gertrude
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Selma
as Amelia Boynton
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Hamlet
as Gertrude
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Glorias
as Flo Kennedy
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Hamlet
as Gertrude
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. Lorraine Toussaint 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
33 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
6 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
Hamlet
as Gertrude
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Hamlet
as Gertrude
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Selma
as Amelia Boynton
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Point of No Return
as Beth
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Hamlet
as Gertrude
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Nimona
as Queen Valerin (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Selma
as Amelia Boynton
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Glorias
as Flo Kennedy
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Reference
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