Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#1930
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Maggie Grace 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.
Maggie Grace appears in 18 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Maggie. The Secret Art of Human Flight is the clearest case: a film rated 8.7 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 crime, thriller, documentary. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Jeff Celentano, Dennis Dugan, Rob Cohen and others, Maggie Grace 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 Secret Art of Human Flight (2024) as Wendy · Taken (2008) as Kim Mills · The Choice (2016) as Stephanie Parker
Career snapshot
Ranked #1930 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
18
2007–2026
Career length
19 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.7
The Secret Art of Human Flight
Average Nutevio score
6.1
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.7
The Secret Art of Human Flight
Most frequent director
Bill Condon
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Bill Condon
Most common genre
Thriller
9 titles
Average runtime
1h 38m
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
6.4
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
7.0 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Taken, The Jane Austen Book Club — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
7.0
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
7.0
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. Taken, The Jane Austen Book Club.
Most productive era
2010s
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 | — | 6.46 films | 7.32 films |
| Action | 7.61 film | 6.25 films | — |
| Thriller | 7.61 film | 6.16 films | 3.02 films |
| Comedy | 6.51 film | 6.22 films | 6.01 film |
| Crime | — | 6.23 films | 3.02 films |
| Romance | 6.51 film | 6.63 films | 6.01 film |
| Horror | — | — | 6.01 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Allegra.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2024The Secret Art of Human Flight
8.7 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
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.
18 of 18 films
as Kim Mills
Directed by Pierre Morel
as Stephanie Parker
Directed by Ross Katz
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
Wendy
The Secret Art of Human Flight (2024)
Performance score8.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Wendy gives Maggie Grace a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Kim Mills
Taken (2008)
Performance score7.9
Taken asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Kim Mills is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Stephanie Parker
The Choice (2016)
Performance score7.6
The Choice asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Stephanie Parker is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Kim Mills
Taken 2 (2012)
Performance score6.9
Taken 2 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Kim Mills 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 Wendy
Start here. The Secret Art of Human Flight is the clearest statement of what Maggie Grace does — accessible, 107 minutes, and rated 8.7 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Maggie 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.
Taken (2008)
A deliberate change of key after The Secret Art of Human Flight — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Taken 2 (2012)
Keeps the action register of Taken but asks for a colder reading of it.
Taken 3 (2014)
Same director as Taken 2, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
The Choice (2016)
A deliberate change of key after Taken 3 — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Bill Condon
Director
2 films together
Notably The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2
Robin Swicord
Director
1 film together
Notably The Jane Austen Book Club
Pierre Morel
Director
1 film together
Notably Taken
Paul T. Scheuring
Director
1 film together
Notably The Experiment
James Mangold
Director
1 film together
Notably Knight and Day
George Tillman Jr.
Director
1 film together
Notably Faster
Jesse Zwick
Director
1 film together
Notably About Alex
Ross Katz
Director
1 film together
Notably The Choice
Elliott Lester
Director
1 film together
Notably Aftermath
Rob Cohen
Director
1 film together
Notably The Hurricane Heist
Dennis Dugan
Director
1 film together
Notably Love, Weddings & Other Disasters
Jeff Celentano
Director
1 film together
Notably Blackwater Lane
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Bill Condon
Director
2 films together · 6.3 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2Pierre Morel
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
TakenRoss Katz
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 ChoiceRobin Swicord
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 Jane Austen Book ClubGeorge Tillman Jr.
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
FasterPaul T. Scheuring
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 ExperimentJames Mangold
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Knight and DayJesse Zwick
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
About AlexJeff Celentano
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Blackwater LaneDennis Dugan
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Love, Weddings & Other DisastersRob Cohen
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Hurricane HeistElliott Lester
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
AftermathSix 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
The Secret Art of Human Flight
as Wendy
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 Choice
as Stephanie Parker
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 Secret Art of Human Flight
as Wendy
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1
as Irina Denali
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Secret Art of Human Flight
as Wendy
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. Maggie Grace 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.
Thriller Legend
Awarded
9 catalogue titles in thriller, 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 Secret Art of Human Flight
as Wendy
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Taken
as Kim Mills
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Choice
as Stephanie Parker
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Blackwater Lane
as Rachel
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Secret Art of Human Flight
as Wendy
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Hurricane Heist
as Casey
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Choice
as Stephanie Parker
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Taken
as Kim Mills
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Jamie Harris
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Elliot Page
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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