Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#46668
of 909177 performers
Top 10%
Maureen O'Sullivan represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 54 years in, and Maureen is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Maureen O'Sullivan appears in 15 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Maureen. Hannah and Her Sisters is the clearest case: a film rated 7.5 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, drama, fantasy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola, Budd Boetticher and others, Maureen O'Sullivan 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.
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) as Norma · The Thin Man (1934) as Dorothy Wynant · The Big Clock (1948) as Georgette Stroud
Career snapshot
Ranked #46668 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
15
1932–1986
Career length
54 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.5
Hannah and Her Sisters
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.5
The Thin Man
Most frequent director
Richard Thorpe
4 films together
Longest collaboration
4×
With Richard Thorpe
Most common genre
Adventure
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 34m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.1
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
6.9
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
6.8 average MV
The 1980s are where the work and the material meet. Hannah and Her Sisters, Peggy Sue Got Married — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1980s
6.8
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1950s
7.0
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1930s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Tarzan Finds a Son!, A Day at the Races, Tarzan Escapes.
Most productive era
1930s
9 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 | 1930s | 1940s | 1950s | 1980s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.52 films | — | — | 6.82 films |
| Action | 6.43 films | 6.22 films | — | — |
| Thriller | — | 6.81 film | — | — |
| Comedy | 6.92 films | — | — | 6.82 films |
| Crime | 7.11 film | 6.81 film | — | — |
| Romance | 6.52 films | — | — | — |
| Horror | 6.51 film | — | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Jane Parker.
Career peak
1934The Thin Man
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
7.5 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
The current state of the argument, as Elizabeth Alvorg.
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.
15 of 15 films
as Dorothy Wynant
Directed by W.S. Van Dyke
as Georgette Stroud
Directed by John Farrow
as Doretta Mims
Directed by Budd Boetticher
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
Dorothy Wynant
The Thin Man (1934)
Performance score7.5
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Dorothy Wynant gives Maureen O'Sullivan a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Norma
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
Performance score7.3
Hannah and Her Sisters asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Norma is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Georgette Stroud
The Big Clock (1948)
Performance score7.2
The Big Clock asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Georgette Stroud is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Doretta Mims
The Tall T (1957)
Performance score7.1
The Tall T asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Doretta Mims 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 Dorothy Wynant
Start here. The Thin Man is the clearest statement of what Maureen O'Sullivan does — accessible, 91 minutes, and rated 7.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Maureen 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.
A Day at the Races (1937)
Keeps the comedy register of The Thin Man but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Big Clock (1948)
A deliberate change of key after A Day at the Races — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Tall T (1957)
A deliberate change of key after The Big Clock — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
A deliberate change of key after The Tall T — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Richard Thorpe
Director
4 films together
Notably Tarzan Escapes
W.S. Van Dyke
Director
2 films together
Notably The Thin Man
Cedric Gibbons
Director
1 film together
Notably Tarzan and His Mate
Clarence Brown
Director
1 film together
Notably Anna Karenina
George Cukor
Director
1 film together
Notably David Copperfield
Tod Browning
Director
1 film together
Notably The Devil-Doll
Sam Wood
Director
1 film together
Notably A Day at the Races
John Farrow
Director
1 film together
Notably The Big Clock
Budd Boetticher
Director
1 film together
Notably The Tall T
Francis Ford Coppola
Director
1 film together
Notably Peggy Sue Got Married
Woody Allen
Director
1 film together
Notably Hannah and Her Sisters
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Richard Thorpe
Director
4 films together · 6.3 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 4 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Tarzan EscapesW.S. Van Dyke
Director
2 films together · 6.8 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The Thin ManWoody Allen
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hannah and Her SistersJohn Farrow
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Big ClockSam Wood
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Day at the RacesBudd Boetticher
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 Tall TTod Browning
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 Devil-DollGeorge Cukor
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
David CopperfieldCedric Gibbons
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Tarzan and His MateClarence Brown
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Anna KareninaFrancis Ford Coppola
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Peggy Sue Got MarriedSix 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
Hannah and Her Sisters
as Norma
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
David Copperfield
as Dora Spenlow
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
The Thin Man
as Dorothy Wynant
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Peggy Sue Got Married
as Elizabeth Alvorg
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Thin Man
as Dorothy Wynant
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. Maureen O'Sullivan 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.
Adventure Legend
Awarded
7 catalogue titles in adventure, 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 Thin Man
as Dorothy Wynant
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Thin Man
as Dorothy Wynant
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
David Copperfield
as Dora Spenlow
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Thin Man
as Dorothy Wynant
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Tarzan Escapes
as Jane
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Tarzan's New York Adventure
as Jane
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
David Copperfield
as Dora Spenlow
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Tarzan's Secret Treasure
as Jane
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Al Pacino
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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