Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#4285
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Maggie Steed 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 Steed appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Maggie. Elizabeth Is Missing is the clearest case: a film rated 7.3 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 comedy, drama, horror. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Nick Moorcroft, Chris Foggin, Aisling Walsh and others, Maggie Steed 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.
Elizabeth Is Missing (2019) as Elizabeth · The Painted Veil (2006) as Mrs. Garstin · Fisherman's Friends (2019) as Maggie
Career snapshot
Ranked #4285 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
2006–2026
Career length
20 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.3
Elizabeth Is Missing
Average Nutevio score
6.0
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
Elizabeth Is Missing
Most frequent director
Nick Moorcroft
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Nick Moorcroft
Most common genre
Drama
7 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
2000s
6.8 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, The Painted Veil — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.8
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.8
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 Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, The Painted Veil.
Most productive era
2010s
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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.31 film | 6.93 films | 4.33 films |
| Action | — | 6.11 film | — |
| Thriller | — | — | 6.51 film |
| Comedy | — | 6.72 films | 3.32 films |
| Romance | 7.31 film | — | — |
| Horror | — | 6.41 film | 6.51 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance
2006The Painted Veil
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Mrs. Garstin. 7.3 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
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 Gillian Rafter.
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.
10 of 10 films
as Elizabeth
Directed by Aisling Walsh
as Mrs. Garstin
Directed by John Curran
as Maggie
Directed by Nick Moorcroft
as Mrs. James O'Flaherty
Directed by Stephen Frears
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
Elizabeth
Elizabeth Is Missing (2019)
Performance score7.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Elizabeth gives Maggie Steed a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Mrs. Garstin
The Painted Veil (2006)
Performance score7.2
The Painted Veil asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mrs. Garstin is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Maggie
Fisherman's Friends: One and All (2022)
Performance score6.7
Fisherman's Friends: One and All asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Maggie is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Maggie
Fisherman's Friends (2019)
Performance score6.6
Fisherman's Friends asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Maggie 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 Elizabeth
Start here. Elizabeth Is Missing is the clearest statement of what Maggie Steed does — accessible, 87 minutes, and rated 7.3 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.
The Painted Veil (2006)
Keeps the drama register of Elizabeth Is Missing but asks for a colder reading of it.
Florence Foster Jenkins (2016)
Keeps the drama register of The Painted Veil but asks for a colder reading of it.
Fisherman's Friends (2019)
Keeps the comedy register of Florence Foster Jenkins but asks for a colder reading of it.
Fisherman's Friends: One and All (2022)
Keeps the comedy register of Fisherman's Friends but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
John Curran
Director
1 film together
Notably The Painted Veil
Terry Gilliam
Director
1 film together
Notably The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Stephen Frears
Director
1 film together
Notably Florence Foster Jenkins
Gore Verbinski
Director
1 film together
Notably A Cure for Wellness
Michael Bay
Director
1 film together
Notably Transformers: The Last Knight
Aisling Walsh
Director
1 film together
Notably Elizabeth Is Missing
Chris Foggin
Director
1 film together
Notably Fisherman's Friends
Nick Moorcroft
Director
1 film together
Notably Fisherman's Friends: One and All
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Aisling Walsh
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Elizabeth Is MissingJohn Curran
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Painted VeilChris Foggin
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fisherman's FriendsStephen Frears
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Florence Foster JenkinsNick Moorcroft
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fisherman's Friends: One and AllGore Verbinski
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Cure for WellnessTerry Gilliam
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 Imaginarium of Doctor ParnassusMichael Bay
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Transformers: The Last KnightSix 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 Painted Veil
as Mrs. Garstin
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 Painted Veil
as Mrs. Garstin
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 Painted Veil
as Mrs. Garstin
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
as Louis Vuitton Woman
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Elizabeth Is Missing
as Elizabeth
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 Steed 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
20 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
7 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
Elizabeth Is Missing
as Elizabeth
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Elizabeth Is Missing
as Elizabeth
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Painted Veil
as Mrs. Garstin
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
as Louis Vuitton Woman
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Painted Veil
as Mrs. Garstin
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Transformers: The Last Knight
as Viviane's Grandmum
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Fisherman's Friends: One and All
as Maggie
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
A Cure for Wellness
as Mrs. Abramov
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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