Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#14687
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Maryann Plunkett works on versatility 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.
Maryann Plunkett appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Maryann. Little Women is the clearest case: a film rated 7.9 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, quiet performance, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for comedy, drama, romance. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Greta Gerwig, Marielle Heller, Jason Bateman and others, Maryann Plunkett 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.
Little Women (2019) as Mrs. Kirke · A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019) as Joanne Rogers · Blue Valentine (2010) as Glenda
Career snapshot
Ranked #14687 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
2000–2023
Career length
23 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.9
Little Women
Average Nutevio score
5.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.8
Little Women
Most frequent director
Greta Gerwig
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Greta Gerwig
Most common genre
Drama
9 titles
Average runtime
1h 27m
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
2000s
7.0 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. The Squid and the Whale, Center Stage — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
7.0
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.9
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2000s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Squid and the Whale, Center Stage.
Most productive era
2010s
5 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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.02 films | 6.85 films | 2.92 films |
| Comedy | 7.01 film | 5.91 film | 2.92 films |
| Crime | — | 6.31 film | — |
| Romance | — | 7.52 films | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2000Center Stage
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Mrs. Sawyer.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2019Little Women
7.9 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
2023Showing Up
The current state of the argument, as Jean.
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 Mrs. Kirke
Directed by Greta Gerwig
as Joanne Rogers
Directed by Marielle Heller
as Glenda
Directed by Derek Cianfrance
as Mrs. Sawyer
Directed by Nicholas Hytner
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
Mrs. Kirke
Little Women (2019)
Performance score7.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Mrs. Kirke gives Maryann Plunkett a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Joanne Rogers
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019)
Performance score7.1
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Joanne Rogers is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Glenda
Blue Valentine (2010)
Performance score6.9
Blue Valentine asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Glenda is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Ms. Lemon
The Squid and the Whale (2005)
Performance score6.9
The Squid and the Whale asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Ms. Lemon 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 Mrs. Kirke
Start here. Little Women is the clearest statement of what Maryann Plunkett does — accessible, 135 minutes, and rated 7.9 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Maryann 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.
Center Stage (2000)
Keeps the drama register of Little Women but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Squid and the Whale (2005)
Keeps the drama register of Center Stage but asks for a colder reading of it.
Blue Valentine (2010)
Keeps the drama register of The Squid and the Whale but asks for a colder reading of it.
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019)
Keeps the drama register of Blue Valentine but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Nicholas Hytner
Director
1 film together
Notably Center Stage
Noah Baumbach
Director
1 film together
Notably The Squid and the Whale
Derek Cianfrance
Director
1 film together
Notably Blue Valentine
Rupert Goold
Director
1 film together
Notably True Story
Jason Bateman
Director
1 film together
Notably The Family Fang
Marielle Heller
Director
1 film together
Notably A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
Greta Gerwig
Director
1 film together
Notably Little Women
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Greta Gerwig
Director
1 film together · 7.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Little WomenMarielle Heller
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Beautiful Day in the NeighborhoodDerek Cianfrance
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Blue ValentineNoah Baumbach
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Squid and the WhaleNicholas Hytner
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Center StageRupert Goold
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
True StoryJason Bateman
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Family FangSix 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
Little Women
as Mrs. Kirke
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Little Women
as Mrs. Kirke
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Little Women
as Mrs. Kirke
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Squid and the Whale
as Ms. Lemon
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Little Women
as Mrs. Kirke
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. Maryann Plunkett 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
23 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
9 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
Little Women
as Mrs. Kirke
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Little Women
as Mrs. Kirke
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Little Women
as Mrs. Kirke
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Family Fang
as Camille Fang
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Little Women
as Mrs. Kirke
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Squid and the Whale
as Ms. Lemon
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
as Joanne Rogers
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Little Women
as Mrs. Kirke
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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