Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#70219
of 909177 performers
Top 10%
Maureen Stapleton represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 25 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 Stapleton appears in 7 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Maureen. Reds is the clearest case: a film rated 6.7 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, versatility, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for science fiction, comedy, romance. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Richard Benjamin, Mike Nichols, Ron Howard and others, Maureen Stapleton 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.
Reds (1981) as Emma Goldman · Cocoon (1985) as Mary Luckett · Cocoon: The Return (1988) as Mary Luckett
Career snapshot
Ranked #70219 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
7
1963–1988
Career length
25 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.7
Reds
Average Nutevio score
6.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
6.9
Reds
Most frequent director
Richard Benjamin
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Richard Benjamin
Most common genre
Comedy
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 58m
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
6.4 average MV
The 1980s are where the work and the material meet. Cocoon: The Return, The Money Pit, Heartburn — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1980s
6.4
Across 6 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1980s
6.5
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1960s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Bye Bye Birdie.
Most productive era
1980s
6 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 | 1960s | 1980s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.43 films |
| Comedy | 6.11 film | 6.45 films |
| Crime | — | 6.31 film |
| Romance | — | 6.43 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1963Bye Bye Birdie
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Mama Mae Peterson.
Highest rated performance
1981Reds
6.7 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
1986The Money Pit
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
The current state of the argument, as Mary Luckett.
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 Estelle
Directed by Richard Benjamin
as Mary Luckett
Directed by Ron Howard
as Emma Goldman
Directed by Warren Beatty
as Mary Luckett
Directed by Unknown
as Vera
Directed by Mike Nichols
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
Estelle
The Money Pit (1986)
Performance score6.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Estelle gives Maureen Stapleton a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Mary Luckett
Cocoon (1985)
Performance score6.6
Cocoon asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mary Luckett is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Emma Goldman
Reds (1981)
Performance score6.6
Reds asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Emma Goldman is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Mary Luckett
Cocoon: The Return (1988)
Performance score6.5
Cocoon: The Return asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mary Luckett 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 Estelle
Start here. The Money Pit is the clearest statement of what Maureen Stapleton does — accessible, 91 minutes, and rated 6.5 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.
Reds (1981)
Keeps the romance register of The Money Pit but asks for a colder reading of it.
Cocoon (1985)
Keeps the drama register of Reds but asks for a colder reading of it.
Heartburn (1986)
Keeps the comedy register of Cocoon but asks for a colder reading of it.
Cocoon: The Return (1988)
Keeps the comedy register of Heartburn but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
George Sidney
Director
1 film together
Notably Bye Bye Birdie
Warren Beatty
Director
1 film together
Notably Reds
Amy Heckerling
Director
1 film together
Notably Johnny Dangerously
Ron Howard
Director
1 film together
Notably Cocoon
Mike Nichols
Director
1 film together
Notably Heartburn
Richard Benjamin
Director
1 film together
Notably The Money Pit
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Warren Beatty
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
RedsRon Howard
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
CocoonRichard Benjamin
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 Money PitAmy Heckerling
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Johnny DangerouslyGeorge Sidney
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Bye Bye BirdieMike Nichols
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
HeartburnSix 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
Cocoon
as Mary Luckett
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Reds
as Emma Goldman
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Reds
as Emma Goldman
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Cocoon: The Return
as Mary Luckett
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Money Pit
as Estelle
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 Stapleton 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
25 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
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
Cocoon
as Mary Luckett
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Cocoon
as Mary Luckett
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Reds
as Emma Goldman
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Cocoon
as Mary Luckett
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Reds
as Emma Goldman
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Cocoon: The Return
as Mary Luckett
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Heartburn
as Vera
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Bye Bye Birdie
as Mama Mae Peterson
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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Have your say
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Reference
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