Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#15734
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Mary Gillis represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 34 years in, and Mary is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Mary Gillis appears in 7 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Mary. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas 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 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, action, science fiction. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Roland Emmerich, Dean Parisot, Michael Patrick Jann and others, Mary Gillis 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.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) as Shopper · Midnight Run (1988) as Bus Ticket Clerk · Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999) as Chloris Klinghagen
Career snapshot
Ranked #15734 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
7
1988–2022
Career length
34 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.2
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.2
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Most frequent director
Roland Emmerich
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Roland Emmerich
Most common genre
Comedy
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 52m
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
6.5
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
1980s
7.0 average MV
The 1980s are where the work and the material meet. Midnight Run — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1980s
7.0
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1980s
7.2
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1980s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Midnight Run.
Most productive era
1990s
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 | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 7.21 film | — | — |
| Action | — | — | 6.11 film | — |
| Thriller | 7.01 film | — | — | — |
| Comedy | 7.01 film | 6.43 films | 6.21 film | 4.91 film |
| Crime | 7.01 film | — | 6.21 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1988Midnight Run
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Bus Ticket Clerk.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1998Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
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.
Most recent film
2022Bromates
The current state of the argument, as Doris.
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.
7 of 7 films
as Shopper
Directed by Terry Gilliam
as Bus Ticket Clerk
Directed by Martin Brest
as Jackson's Neighbor
Directed by Roland Emmerich
as Lactose Intolerant Shopper
Directed by Dean Parisot
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
Shopper
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
Performance score7.1
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Shopper gives Mary Gillis a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Bus Ticket Clerk
Midnight Run (1988)
Performance score6.9
Midnight Run asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Bus Ticket Clerk is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Doris
Bromates (2022)
Performance score6.5
Bromates asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Doris is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Jackson's Neighbor
2012 (2009)
Performance score6.5
2012 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Jackson's Neighbor 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 Shopper
Start here. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the clearest statement of what Mary Gillis does — accessible, 118 minutes, and rated 7.2 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Mary 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.
Midnight Run (1988)
Keeps the comedy register of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas but asks for a colder reading of it.
Fun with Dick and Jane (2005)
Keeps the comedy register of Midnight Run but asks for a colder reading of it.
2012 (2009)
A deliberate change of key after Fun with Dick and Jane — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Bromates (2022)
A deliberate change of key after 2012 — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Martin Brest
Director
1 film together
Notably Midnight Run
Ivan Reitman
Director
1 film together
Notably Fathers' Day
Terry Gilliam
Director
1 film together
Notably Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Michael Patrick Jann
Director
1 film together
Notably Drop Dead Gorgeous
Dean Parisot
Director
1 film together
Notably Fun with Dick and Jane
Roland Emmerich
Director
1 film together
Notably 2012
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Terry Gilliam
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fear and Loathing in Las VegasMartin Brest
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Midnight RunMichael Patrick Jann
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Drop Dead GorgeousDean Parisot
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fun with Dick and JaneRoland Emmerich
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
2012Ivan Reitman
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fathers' DaySix 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
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
as Shopper
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
as Shopper
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
as Shopper
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
as Shopper
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
as Shopper
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. Mary Gillis 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
34 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
6 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
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
as Shopper
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Midnight Run
as Bus Ticket Clerk
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
as Shopper
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Midnight Run
as Bus Ticket Clerk
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
as Shopper
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
2012
as Jackson's Neighbor
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
as Shopper
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
2012
as Jackson's Neighbor
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Tom Hanks
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Bonnie Hunt
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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