Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#5172
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Marcia DeBonis represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 27 years in, and Marcia is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Marcia DeBonis appears in 11 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Marcia. The Truman Show is the clearest case: a film rated 8.4 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, quiet performance, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, comedy, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Owen Kline, Benny Safdie, Clint Eastwood and others, Marcia DeBonis 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 Truman Show (1998) as Nurse · The Devil's Advocate (1997) as Nurse #2 · Uncut Gems (2019) as Drama Teacher
Career snapshot
Ranked #5172 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
11
1997–2024
Career length
27 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.4
The Truman Show
Average Nutevio score
6.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.2
The Truman Show
Most frequent director
Owen Kline
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Owen Kline
Most common genre
Comedy
8 titles
Average runtime
1h 44m
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
1990s
7.3 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. The Truman Show, The Devil's Advocate, Picture Perfect — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
7.3
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
7.2
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. The Truman Show, The Devil's Advocate, Picture Perfect.
Most productive era
2010s
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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.33 films | — | 7.13 films | 6.81 film |
| Thriller | — | — | 7.21 film | — |
| Comedy | 7.22 films | 6.92 films | 6.62 films | 6.32 films |
| Crime | — | — | 7.21 film | — |
| Romance | 5.91 film | 6.92 films | 7.01 film | 6.81 film |
| Horror | 7.61 film | — | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Nurse #2.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1998The Truman Show
8.4 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
2024Sometimes I Think About Dying
The current state of the argument, as Carol.
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.
11 of 11 films
as Nurse
Directed by Peter Weir
as Nurse #2
Directed by Taylor Hackford
as Drama Teacher
Directed by Benny Safdie
as Shae Childers
Directed by Clint Eastwood
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
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The defining work
#1
Nurse
The Truman Show (1998)
Performance score8.1
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Nurse gives Marcia DeBonis a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Nurse #2
The Devil's Advocate (1997)
Performance score7.4
The Devil's Advocate asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Nurse #2 is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Drama Teacher
Uncut Gems (2019)
Performance score7.1
Uncut Gems asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Drama Teacher is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Shae Childers
Sully (2016)
Performance score7.1
Sully asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Shae Childers 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 Nurse
Start here. The Truman Show is the clearest statement of what Marcia DeBonis does — accessible, 103 minutes, and rated 8.4 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Marcia 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 Devil's Advocate (1997)
Keeps the drama register of The Truman Show but asks for a colder reading of it.
Sully (2016)
Keeps the drama register of The Devil's Advocate but asks for a colder reading of it.
Uncut Gems (2019)
Keeps the drama register of Sully but asks for a colder reading of it.
Sometimes I Think About Dying (2024)
Keeps the drama register of Uncut Gems but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Glenn Gordon Caron
Director
1 film together
Notably Picture Perfect
Taylor Hackford
Director
1 film together
Notably The Devil's Advocate
Peter Weir
Director
1 film together
Notably The Truman Show
Woody Allen
Director
1 film together
Notably Whatever Works
Larry Charles
Director
1 film together
Notably The Dictator
Clint Eastwood
Director
1 film together
Notably Sully
Benny Safdie
Director
1 film together
Notably Uncut Gems
Owen Kline
Director
1 film together
Notably Funny Pages
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Peter Weir
Director
1 film together · 8.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Truman ShowTaylor Hackford
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Devil's AdvocateBenny Safdie
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Uncut GemsClint Eastwood
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SullyWoody Allen
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Whatever WorksLarry Charles
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The DictatorGlenn Gordon Caron
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Picture PerfectOwen Kline
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Funny PagesSix 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 Truman Show
as Nurse
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Sully
as Shae Childers
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 Truman Show
as Nurse
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Devil's Advocate
as Nurse #2
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Truman Show
as Nurse
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. Marcia DeBonis 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
27 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.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
8 catalogue titles in comedy, 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 Truman Show
as Nurse
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Devil's Advocate
as Nurse #2
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Sully
as Shae Childers
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Devil's Advocate
as Nurse #2
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Truman Show
as Nurse
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Truman Show
as Nurse
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Letters to Juliet
as Lorraine
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Truman Show
as Nurse
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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