Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#6645
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Lucy Faust 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.
Lucy Faust appears in 20 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Lucy. The Devil All the Time 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 thriller, horror, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Danielle Nicolet, Tate Taylor, Antonio Campos and others, Lucy Faust 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.
The Devil All the Time (2020) as Cynthia Teagardin · Mudbound (2017) as Vera Atwood · 12 Mighty Orphans (2021) as Wanda Sealy
Career snapshot
Ranked #6645 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
20
2009–2026
Career length
17 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.2
The Devil All the Time
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.4
Mudbound
Most frequent director
Danielle Nicolet
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Danielle Nicolet
Most common genre
Drama
12 titles
Average runtime
1h 47m
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
6.3
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
6.5 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. The True Don Quixote, Out of Blue, Assassination Nation — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.5
Across 8 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.4
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. The Yellow Handkerchief.
Most productive era
2020s
11 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 | 6.31 film | 6.55 films | 6.56 films |
| Action | — | 6.82 films | 6.72 films |
| Thriller | — | 6.31 film | 5.35 films |
| Comedy | — | 6.53 films | 6.43 films |
| Crime | — | 6.32 films | 6.63 films |
| Romance | 6.31 film | 6.21 film | — |
| Horror | — | 6.31 film | 6.63 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Snotty Girl.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2017Mudbound
7.2 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
The current state of the argument, as Tara.
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.
20 of 20 films
as Cynthia Teagardin
Directed by Antonio Campos
as Wanda Sealy
Directed by Unknown
as Second Woman / Yeoman Farmer
Directed by Gary Ross
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
Cynthia Teagardin
The Devil All the Time (2020)
Performance score7.1
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Cynthia Teagardin gives Lucy Faust a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Vera Atwood
Mudbound (2017)
Performance score7.1
Mudbound asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Vera Atwood is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Lucinda
The True Don Quixote (2019)
Performance score6.9
The True Don Quixote asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Lucinda is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Wanda Sealy
12 Mighty Orphans (2021)
Performance score6.7
12 Mighty Orphans asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Wanda Sealy 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 Cynthia Teagardin
Start here. The Devil All the Time is the clearest statement of what Lucy Faust does — accessible, 138 minutes, and rated 7.2 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Lucy 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.
Free State of Jones (2016)
Keeps the drama register of The Devil All the Time but asks for a colder reading of it.
Mudbound (2017)
Keeps the drama register of Free State of Jones but asks for a colder reading of it.
The True Don Quixote (2019)
A deliberate change of key after Mudbound — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
12 Mighty Orphans (2021)
Same director as The True Don Quixote, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Udayan Prasad
Director
1 film together
Notably The Yellow Handkerchief
Richard LaGravenese
Director
1 film together
Notably Beautiful Creatures
Baltasar Kormákur
Director
1 film together
Notably 2 Guns
Gary Ross
Director
1 film together
Notably Free State of Jones
Dee Rees
Director
1 film together
Notably Mudbound
Sam Levinson
Director
1 film together
Notably Assassination Nation
Derrick Borte
Director
1 film together
Notably Unhinged
Antonio Campos
Director
1 film together
Notably The Devil All the Time
Tate Taylor
Director
1 film together
Notably Breaking News in Yuba County
Danielle Nicolet
Director
1 film together
Notably Long Time Listener
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Antonio Campos
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Devil All the TimeDee Rees
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
MudboundGary Ross
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Free State of JonesBaltasar Kormákur
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
2 GunsDerrick Borte
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
UnhingedSam Levinson
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Assassination NationUdayan Prasad
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Yellow HandkerchiefRichard LaGravenese
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Beautiful CreaturesTate Taylor
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Breaking News in Yuba CountyDanielle Nicolet
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Long Time ListenerSix 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
Mudbound
as Vera Atwood
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Nickel Boys
as Mrs. Hardee
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Mudbound
as Vera Atwood
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
We Have a Ghost
as H&R Block Receptionist
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Devil All the Time
as Cynthia Teagardin
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. Lucy Faust 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.
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
12 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
The Devil All the Time
as Cynthia Teagardin
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Devil All the Time
as Cynthia Teagardin
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Nickel Boys
as Mrs. Hardee
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Out of Blue
as Ruby
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
12 Mighty Orphans
as Wanda Sealy
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Unhinged
as Rosie
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Breaking News in Yuba County
as Janet
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Ravine
as Mary Ann Turner
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Robert Downey Jr.
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Have your say
Community
Which Lucy Faust performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
Join the conversation
Reference
Continue exploring
Trending performers
Directors they work with
Collections to read next
