Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#8801
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Mia Farrow represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 54 years in, and Mia is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Mia Farrow appears in 16 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Mia. Rat Pack is the clearest case: a film rated 9.0 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 documentary, fantasy, adventure. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Luc Besson, Michel Gondry, Jesse Peretz and others, Mia Farrow 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.
Rat Pack (2022) as Self (archive footage) · Rosemary's Baby (1968) as Rosemary Woodhouse · Jay Sebring… Cutting to the Truth (2020) as Self(archive footage)
Career snapshot
Ranked #8801 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
16
1968–2022
Career length
54 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
9.0
Rat Pack
Average Nutevio score
6.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
9.0
Rat Pack
Most frequent director
Luc Besson
3 films together
Longest collaboration
3×
With Luc Besson
Most common genre
Comedy
6 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
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
7.1
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
1960s
7.8 average MV
The 1960s are where the work and the material meet. Rosemary's Baby — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1960s
7.8
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1960s
7.8
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. Rosemary's Baby.
Most productive era
1980s
4 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 | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.81 film | 6.41 film | 6.82 films | 7.01 film | 6.31 film | — | — |
| Thriller | 7.81 film | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Comedy | — | — | 7.03 films | 7.01 film | 5.82 films | — | — |
| Romance | — | 6.41 film | 6.72 films | 7.01 film | 5.31 film | — | — |
| Horror | 7.81 film | — | — | — | — | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1968Rosemary's Baby
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Rosemary Woodhouse.
First Nutevio masterpiece · Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2022Rat Pack
The first film here to clear 9.0 on our scale — a threshold fewer than one film in ten reaches. 9.0 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. The current state of the argument, as Self (archive footage).
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 Rosemary Woodhouse
Directed by Roman Polanski
as Cecilia
Directed by Woody Allen
as Unicorn / Amalthea (voice)
Directed by Arthur Rankin, Jr.
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
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The defining work
#1
Self (archive footage)
Rat Pack (2022)
Performance score8.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Self (archive footage) gives Mia Farrow a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Rosemary Woodhouse
Rosemary's Baby (1968)
Performance score8.3
Rosemary's Baby asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Rosemary Woodhouse is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Hannah
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
Performance score8.1
Hannah and Her Sisters asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Hannah is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Cecilia
The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)
Performance score7.8
The Purple Rose of Cairo asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Cecilia 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 (archive footage)
Start here. Rat Pack is the clearest statement of what Mia Farrow does — accessible, 0 minutes, and rated 9.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Mia 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.
Rosemary's Baby (1968)
A deliberate change of key after Rat Pack — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Last Unicorn (1982)
A deliberate change of key after Rosemary's Baby — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)
Keeps the fantasy register of The Last Unicorn but asks for a colder reading of it.
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
Same director as The Purple Rose of Cairo, 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.
Woody Allen
Director
3 films together
Notably Hannah and Her Sisters
Luc Besson
Director
3 films together
Notably Arthur and the Invisibles
Roman Polanski
Director
1 film together
Notably Rosemary's Baby
Jack Clayton
Director
1 film together
Notably The Great Gatsby
John Guillermin
Director
1 film together
Notably Death on the Nile
Arthur Rankin, Jr.
Director
1 film together
Notably The Last Unicorn
Francis Ford Coppola
Director
1 film together
Notably New York Stories
Jesse Peretz
Director
1 film together
Notably The Ex
Michel Gondry
Director
1 film together
Notably Be Kind Rewind
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Woody Allen
Director
3 films together · 7.2 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Hannah and Her SistersLuc Besson
Director
3 films together · 6.0 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Arthur and the InvisiblesRoman Polanski
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Rosemary's BabyArthur Rankin, Jr.
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 Last UnicornJohn Guillermin
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Death on the NileJack Clayton
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Great GatsbyMichel Gondry
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Be Kind RewindFrancis Ford Coppola
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
New York StoriesJesse Peretz
Director
1 film together · 5.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The ExSix 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
Rosemary's Baby
as Rosemary Woodhouse
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Husbands and Wives
as Judy Roth
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Rat Pack
as Self (archive footage)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Rat Pack
as Self (archive footage)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Rat Pack
as Self (archive footage)
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. Mia Farrow 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.
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
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
Rat Pack
as Self (archive footage)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Rosemary's Baby
as Rosemary Woodhouse
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Arthur 3: The War of the Two Worlds
as Granny
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Death on the Nile
as Jacqueline de Bellefort
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Rat Pack
as Self (archive footage)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Last Unicorn
as Unicorn / Amalthea (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Last Unicorn
as Unicorn / Amalthea (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Great Gatsby
as Daisy Buchanan
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
Which Mia Farrow performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
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Reference
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