Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#66408
of 909177 performers
Top 10%
Mary Woronov represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 46 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 Woronov appears in 7 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Mary. The Velvet Underground is the clearest case: a film rated 6.6 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 music, documentary, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Todd Haynes, Joe Dante, Warren Beatty and others, Mary Woronov 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 Velvet Underground (2021) as Self · Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003) as Acme VP, Bad Ideas · Time Warp Vol. 3: Comedy and Camp (2020) as Self
Career snapshot
Ranked #66408 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
7
1975–2021
Career length
46 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.6
The Velvet Underground
Average Nutevio score
6.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
6.8
Time Warp Vol. 3: Comedy and Camp
Most frequent director
Todd Haynes
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Todd Haynes
Most common genre
Comedy
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 40m
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
6.8
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
2000s
6.5 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Looney Tunes: Back in Action — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.5
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
6.7
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. Rock 'n' Roll High School, Death Race 2000.
Most productive era
2020s
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 | 1970s | 1990s | 2000s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Action | 6.31 film | — | — | — |
| Comedy | 6.32 films | 6.41 film | 6.51 film | 6.41 film |
| Crime | — | 6.41 film | — | — |
| Horror | — | — | — | 6.31 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1975Death Race 2000
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Calamity Jane.
Career peak
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance · Most recent film
6.6 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. The current state of the argument, as Self.
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 Self
Directed by Unknown
as Acme VP, Bad Ideas
Directed by Joe Dante
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
Self
The Velvet Underground (2021)
Performance score6.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Self gives Mary Woronov a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Miss Togar
Rock 'n' Roll High School (1979)
Performance score6.6
Rock 'n' Roll High School asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Miss Togar is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Self
Time Warp Vol. 3: Comedy and Camp (2020)
Performance score6.5
Time Warp Vol. 3: Comedy and Camp asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Self
Time Warp Vol. 2: Horror and Sci-Fi (2020)
Performance score6.5
Time Warp Vol. 2: Horror and Sci-Fi asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self 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 Self
Start here. The Velvet Underground is the clearest statement of what Mary Woronov does — accessible, 121 minutes, and rated 6.6 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.
Rock 'n' Roll High School (1979)
Keeps the music register of The Velvet Underground but asks for a colder reading of it.
Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003)
Keeps the comedy register of Rock 'n' Roll High School but asks for a colder reading of it.
Time Warp Vol. 3: Comedy and Camp (2020)
Keeps the comedy register of Looney Tunes: Back in Action but asks for a colder reading of it.
Time Warp Vol. 2: Horror and Sci-Fi (2020)
Same director as Time Warp Vol. 3: Comedy and Camp, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Paul Bartel
Director
1 film together
Notably Death Race 2000
Allan Arkush
Director
1 film together
Notably Rock 'n' Roll High School
Warren Beatty
Director
1 film together
Notably Dick Tracy
Joe Dante
Director
1 film together
Notably Looney Tunes: Back in Action
Todd Haynes
Director
1 film together
Notably The Velvet Underground
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Todd Haynes
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Velvet UndergroundJoe Dante
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Looney Tunes: Back in ActionWarren Beatty
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Dick TracyAllan Arkush
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Rock 'n' Roll High SchoolPaul Bartel
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Death Race 2000Six 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 Velvet Underground
as Self
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
The Velvet Underground
as Self
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Rock 'n' Roll High School
as Miss Togar
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Dick Tracy
as Welfare Person
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Velvet Underground
as Self
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 Woronov 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
46 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
5 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 Velvet Underground
as Self
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Time Warp Vol. 2: Horror and Sci-Fi
as Self
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Velvet Underground
as Self
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Looney Tunes: Back in Action
as Acme VP, Bad Ideas
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Death Race 2000
as Calamity Jane
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Death Race 2000
as Calamity Jane
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Dick Tracy
as Welfare Person
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Dick Tracy
as Welfare Person
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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