Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#7581
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Mary Pat Gleason represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 30 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 Pat Gleason appears in 16 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Mary. A Walk in the Clouds is the clearest case: a film rated 7.4 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 thriller, romance, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with David Martín Porras, John Hamburg, Frank Coraci and others, Mary Pat Gleason 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.
A Walk in the Clouds (1995) as Bus Driver · Basic Instinct (1992) as Juvenile Officer · Blended (2014) as Pharmacy Cashier
Career snapshot
Ranked #7581 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
16
1989–2019
Career length
30 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.4
A Walk in the Clouds
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.4
A Walk in the Clouds
Most frequent director
David Martín Porras
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With David Martín Porras
Most common genre
Comedy
11 titles
Average runtime
1h 50m
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
1990s
7.0 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. The Crucible, A Walk in the Clouds, Basic Instinct — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
7.0
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
7.0
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. Troop Beverly Hills.
Most productive era
2000s
7 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 | 2010s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.93 films | — | 6.31 film |
| Action | — | — | 6.42 films | — |
| Thriller | — | 7.11 film | 6.71 film | 5.11 film |
| Comedy | 5.71 film | 6.91 film | 6.46 films | 6.53 films |
| Romance | — | 7.22 films | 6.53 films | 6.62 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Kindly Troop Leader.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
7.4 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
2019The Chain
The current state of the argument.
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.
16 of 16 films
as Juvenile Officer
Directed by Paul Verhoeven
as Pharmacy Cashier
Directed by Frank Coraci
as Heavyish Woman
Directed by Tom Shadyac
as Waitress
Directed by Albert Brooks
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
Bus Driver
A Walk in the Clouds (1995)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Bus Driver gives Mary Pat Gleason a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Juvenile Officer
Basic Instinct (1992)
Performance score7.0
Basic Instinct asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Juvenile Officer is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Pharmacy Cashier
Blended (2014)
Performance score6.8
Blended asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Pharmacy Cashier is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Heavyish Woman
Bruce Almighty (2003)
Performance score6.8
Bruce Almighty asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Heavyish Woman 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 Bus Driver
Start here. A Walk in the Clouds is the clearest statement of what Mary Pat Gleason does — accessible, 103 minutes, and rated 7.4 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.
Defending Your Life (1991)
Keeps the romance register of A Walk in the Clouds but asks for a colder reading of it.
Basic Instinct (1992)
A deliberate change of key after Defending Your Life — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Bruce Almighty (2003)
A deliberate change of key after Basic Instinct — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Blended (2014)
Keeps the comedy register of Bruce Almighty but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Jeff Kanew
Director
1 film together
Notably Troop Beverly Hills
Albert Brooks
Director
1 film together
Notably Defending Your Life
Paul Verhoeven
Director
1 film together
Notably Basic Instinct
Alfonso Arau
Director
1 film together
Notably A Walk in the Clouds
Nicholas Hytner
Director
1 film together
Notably The Crucible
Ivan Reitman
Director
1 film together
Notably Evolution
Tom Shadyac
Director
1 film together
Notably Bruce Almighty
Mark Rosman
Director
1 film together
Notably A Cinderella Story
Michael Bay
Director
1 film together
Notably The Island
Dennis Dugan
Director
1 film together
Notably I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry
Steven Brill
Director
1 film together
Notably Drillbit Taylor
Frank Coraci
Director
1 film together
Notably Blended
John Hamburg
Director
1 film together
Notably Why Him?
David Martín Porras
Director
1 film together
Notably The Chain
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Alfonso Arau
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Walk in the CloudsPaul Verhoeven
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Basic InstinctFrank Coraci
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BlendedTom Shadyac
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Bruce AlmightyAlbert Brooks
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Defending Your LifeMichael Bay
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The IslandMark Rosman
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Cinderella StoryNicholas Hytner
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The CrucibleJohn Hamburg
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Why Him?Dennis Dugan
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
I Now Pronounce You Chuck & LarryIvan Reitman
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
EvolutionSteven Brill
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Drillbit TaylorJeff Kanew
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Troop Beverly HillsDavid Martín Porras
Director
1 film together · 5.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The ChainSix 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
Basic Instinct
as Juvenile Officer
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
A Walk in the Clouds
as Bus Driver
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
A Walk in the Clouds
as Bus Driver
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Drillbit Taylor
as Mrs. Farber
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
A Walk in the Clouds
as Bus Driver
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 Pat Gleason 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
30 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
11 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
Basic Instinct
as Juvenile Officer
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Basic Instinct
as Juvenile Officer
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
A Walk in the Clouds
as Bus Driver
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Basic Instinct
as Juvenile Officer
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Island
as Nutrition Clerk
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Island
as Nutrition Clerk
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Defending Your Life
as Waitress
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Bruce Almighty
as Heavyish Woman
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
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Reference
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