Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#28592
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Marisa Berenson represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 54 years in, and Marisa is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Marisa Berenson appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Marisa. Broken Poet is the clearest case: a film rated 10.0 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 tv movie, drama, history. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Arielle Dombasle, Luc Besson, Clint Eastwood and others, Marisa Berenson 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.
Broken Poet (2020) as Kathy Madison · Barry Lyndon (1975) as Lady Lyndon · Dogman (2023) as Aristocrat
Career snapshot
Ranked #28592 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
1972–2026
Career length
54 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
10.0
Broken Poet
Average Nutevio score
5.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
10.0
Broken Poet
Most frequent director
Arielle Dombasle
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Arielle Dombasle
Most common genre
Drama
8 titles
Average runtime
1h 32m
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
6.6
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
1970s
7.5 average MV
The 1970s are where the work and the material meet. Barry Lyndon, Cabaret — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1970s
7.5
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1970s
7.7
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1970s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Barry Lyndon, Cabaret.
Most productive era
2020s
6 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 | 1970s | 1990s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.52 films | 6.41 film | 6.01 film | 1.94 films |
| Action | — | — | — | 7.61 film |
| Comedy | — | — | 6.01 film | — |
| Crime | — | — | — | 7.61 film |
| Romance | 7.21 film | — | 6.01 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1972Cabaret
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Natalia Landauer.
First Nutevio masterpiece · Highest rated performance · Career peak
2020Broken Poet
The first film here to clear 9.0 on our scale — a threshold fewer than one film in ten reaches. 10.0 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
2026Melpomène
The current state of the argument, as Martha’s Grandmother.
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 Kathy Madison
Directed by Unknown
as Lady Lyndon
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
as Aristocrat
Directed by Luc Besson
as Self (archive footage)
Directed by Unknown
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
Kathy Madison
Broken Poet (2020)
Performance score9.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Kathy Madison gives Marisa Berenson a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Lady Lyndon
Barry Lyndon (1975)
Performance score8.1
Barry Lyndon asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Lady Lyndon is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Aristocrat
Dogman (2023)
Performance score7.4
Dogman asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Aristocrat is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Natalia Landauer
Cabaret (1972)
Performance score7.3
Cabaret asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Natalia Landauer 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 Kathy Madison
Start here. Broken Poet is the clearest statement of what Marisa Berenson does — accessible, 106 minutes, and rated 10.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Marisa 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.
Cabaret (1972)
Keeps the music register of Broken Poet but asks for a colder reading of it.
Barry Lyndon (1975)
Keeps the drama register of Cabaret but asks for a colder reading of it.
Kubrick by Kubrick (2020)
Keeps the history register of Barry Lyndon but asks for a colder reading of it.
Dogman (2023)
A deliberate change of key after Kubrick by Kubrick — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Bob Fosse
Director
1 film together
Notably Cabaret
Stanley Kubrick
Director
1 film together
Notably Barry Lyndon
Clint Eastwood
Director
1 film together
Notably White Hunter, Black Heart
Luc Besson
Director
1 film together
Notably Dogman
Arielle Dombasle
Director
1 film together
Notably Les derniers jours de Charles Baudelaire
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Stanley Kubrick
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Barry LyndonLuc Besson
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
DogmanBob Fosse
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
CabaretClint Eastwood
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
White Hunter, Black HeartArielle Dombasle
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Six 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
Broken Poet
as Kathy Madison
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Cabaret
as Natalia Landauer
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Broken Poet
as Kathy Madison
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Broken Poet
as Kathy Madison
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Broken Poet
as Kathy Madison
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. Marisa Berenson 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
54 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
8 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
Broken Poet
as Kathy Madison
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Broken Poet
as Kathy Madison
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Cabaret
as Natalia Landauer
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Dogman
as Aristocrat
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Broken Poet
as Kathy Madison
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Dogman
as Aristocrat
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Love Punch
as Clothilde
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Les derniers jours de Charles Baudelaire
as Caroline Aupick
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Harvey Keitel
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
Tom Wilkinson
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
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Reference
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