Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#1805
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Milana Vayntrub 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.
Milana Vayntrub appears in 12 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Milana. Project Hail Mary is the clearest case: a film rated 8.8 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 science fiction, adventure, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Phil Lord, Lara Everly, Eric Appel and others, Milana Vayntrub 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.
Project Hail Mary (2026) as Olesya Ilyukhina · Marvel Rising: Heart of Iron (2019) as Doreen Green / Squirrel Girl (voice) · Marvel Rising: Chasing Ghosts (2019) as Squirrel Girl / Doreen Green (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #1805 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
12
2011–2026
Career length
15 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.8
Project Hail Mary
Average Nutevio score
5.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.7
Project Hail Mary
Most frequent director
Sol Choi
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Sol Choi
Most common genre
Comedy
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 8m
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
2010s
5.9 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Marvel Rising: Heart of Iron, Marvel Rising: Playing with Fire, Marvel Rising: Chasing Ghosts — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
5.9
Across 8 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
5.9
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2010s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Marvel Rising: Heart of Iron, Marvel Rising: Playing with Fire, Marvel Rising: Chasing Ghosts.
Most productive era
2010s
8 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 | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 5.62 films | 0.01 film |
| Action | 6.15 films | 5.91 film |
| Thriller | — | 5.91 film |
| Comedy | 5.64 films | 4.03 films |
| Romance | 5.41 film | — |
| Horror | — | 6.01 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2011L!fe Happens
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Jayde's Friend Tanya.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
8.8 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
2026Selah
The current state of the argument, as Claire.
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.
12 of 12 films
as Olesya Ilyukhina
Directed by Phil Lord
as Doreen Green / Squirrel Girl (voice)
Directed by Sol Choi
as Leah
Directed by Eric Appel
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
Olesya Ilyukhina
Project Hail Mary (2026)
Performance score8.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Olesya Ilyukhina gives Milana Vayntrub a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Doreen Green / Squirrel Girl (voice)
Marvel Rising: Heart of Iron (2019)
Performance score6.6
Marvel Rising: Heart of Iron asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Doreen Green / Squirrel Girl (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Claire
Selah (2026)
Performance score6.5
Selah asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Claire is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Leah
Die Hart (2023)
Performance score6.5
Die Hart asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Leah 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 Olesya Ilyukhina
Start here. Project Hail Mary is the clearest statement of what Milana Vayntrub does — accessible, 157 minutes, and rated 8.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Milana 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.
Marvel Rising: Heart of Iron (2019)
Keeps the science fiction register of Project Hail Mary but asks for a colder reading of it.
Werewolves Within (2021)
A deliberate change of key after Marvel Rising: Heart of Iron — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Die Hart (2023)
Keeps the comedy register of Werewolves Within but asks for a colder reading of it.
Selah (2026)
Keeps the comedy register of Die Hart but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Sol Choi
Director
2 films together
Notably Marvel Rising: Heart of Iron
Kat Coiro
Director
1 film together
Notably L!fe Happens
Paul Feig
Director
1 film together
Notably Ghostbusters
Alfred Gimeno
Director
1 film together
Notably Marvel Rising: Chasing Ghosts
Josh Ruben
Director
1 film together
Notably Werewolves Within
Eric Appel
Director
1 film together
Notably Die Hart
Lara Everly
Director
1 film together
Notably Selah
Phil Lord
Director
1 film together
Notably Project Hail Mary
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Sol Choi
Director
2 films together · 6.3 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Marvel Rising: Heart of IronPhil Lord
Director
1 film together · 8.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Project Hail MaryAlfred Gimeno
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Marvel Rising: Chasing GhostsJosh Ruben
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Werewolves WithinEric Appel
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Die HartKat Coiro
Director
1 film together · 5.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
L!fe HappensPaul Feig
Director
1 film together · 5.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
GhostbustersLara Everly
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SelahSix 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
Project Hail Mary
as Olesya Ilyukhina
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
L!fe Happens
as Jayde's Friend Tanya
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Project Hail Mary
as Olesya Ilyukhina
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Ghostbusters
as Subway Rat Woman
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Project Hail Mary
as Olesya Ilyukhina
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. Milana Vayntrub 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.
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
7 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
Project Hail Mary
as Olesya Ilyukhina
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Project Hail Mary
as Olesya Ilyukhina
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
L!fe Happens
as Jayde's Friend Tanya
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Project Hail Mary
as Olesya Ilyukhina
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Project Hail Mary
as Olesya Ilyukhina
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Marvel Rising: Playing with Fire
as Squirrel Girl / Doreen Green (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
L!fe Happens
as Jayde's Friend Tanya
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Project Hail Mary
as Olesya Ilyukhina
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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