Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#172796
of 909177 performers
Top 25%
Margaret Lindsay works on quiet performance 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.
Margaret Lindsay appears in 5 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Margaret. Scarlet Street 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 quiet performance, drama, screen presence. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for crime, drama, western. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Fritz Lang, Ray Enright, William Wyler and others, Margaret Lindsay 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.
Scarlet Street (1945) as Millie Ray · Jezebel (1938) as Amy Bradford Dillard · 'G' Men (1935) as Kay McCord
Career snapshot
Ranked #172796 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
5
1933–1945
Career length
12 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.2
Scarlet Street
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.6
Scarlet Street
Most frequent director
Fritz Lang
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Fritz Lang
Most common genre
Drama
5 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
6.3
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
1940s
6.8 average MV
The 1940s are where the work and the material meet. Scarlet Street, The Spoilers — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1940s
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
1940s
6.9
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1930s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Jezebel, 'G' Men, Cavalcade.
Most productive era
1930s
3 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 | 1930s | 1940s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.43 films | 6.82 films |
| Crime | 6.51 film | 7.21 film |
| Romance | 6.71 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1933Cavalcade
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Edith Harris.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
1945Scarlet Street
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. The current state of the argument, as Millie Ray.
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.
5 of 5 films
as Millie Ray
Directed by Fritz Lang
as Kay McCord
Directed by William Keighley
as Amy Bradford Dillard
Directed by William Wyler
as Helen Chester
Directed by Ray Enright
as Edith Harris
Directed by Frank Lloyd
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
Millie Ray
Scarlet Street (1945)
Performance score7.3
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Millie Ray gives Margaret Lindsay a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Kay McCord
'G' Men (1935)
Performance score7.0
'G' Men asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Kay McCord is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Amy Bradford Dillard
Jezebel (1938)
Performance score6.9
Jezebel asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Amy Bradford Dillard is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Helen Chester
The Spoilers (1942)
Performance score6.5
The Spoilers asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Helen Chester 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 Millie Ray
Start here. Scarlet Street is the clearest statement of what Margaret Lindsay does — accessible, 103 minutes, and rated 7.2 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Margaret 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.
Cavalcade (1933)
Keeps the drama register of Scarlet Street but asks for a colder reading of it.
'G' Men (1935)
Keeps the drama register of Cavalcade but asks for a colder reading of it.
Jezebel (1938)
Keeps the drama register of 'G' Men but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Spoilers (1942)
Keeps the drama register of Jezebel but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Frank Lloyd
Director
1 film together
Notably Cavalcade
William Keighley
Director
1 film together
Notably 'G' Men
William Wyler
Director
1 film together
Notably Jezebel
Ray Enright
Director
1 film together
Notably The Spoilers
Fritz Lang
Director
1 film together
Notably Scarlet Street
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Fritz Lang
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Scarlet StreetWilliam Wyler
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
JezebelWilliam Keighley
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
'G' MenRay Enright
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 SpoilersFrank Lloyd
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
CavalcadeSix 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
Scarlet Street
as Millie Ray
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Jezebel
as Amy Bradford Dillard
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Scarlet Street
as Millie Ray
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Cavalcade
as Edith Harris
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Scarlet Street
as Millie Ray
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. Margaret Lindsay 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
5 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
Scarlet Street
as Millie Ray
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Scarlet Street
as Millie Ray
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Jezebel
as Amy Bradford Dillard
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Scarlet Street
as Millie Ray
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Scarlet Street
as Millie Ray
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Spoilers
as Helen Chester
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Scarlet Street
as Millie Ray
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Cavalcade
as Edith Harris
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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