Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#17465
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Myra Lucretia Taylor represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 28 years in, and Myra is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Myra Lucretia Taylor appears in 14 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Myra. American Fiction is the clearest case: a film rated 7.3 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, mystery. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Tony Goldwyn, Cord Jefferson, Tobias Lindholm and others, Myra Lucretia Taylor 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.
American Fiction (2023) as Lorraine · Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007) as Grader · Ezra (2024) as Margo
Career snapshot
Ranked #17465 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
14
1996–2024
Career length
28 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.3
American Fiction
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
American Fiction
Most frequent director
Tony Goldwyn
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Tony Goldwyn
Most common genre
Drama
11 titles
Average runtime
1h 45m
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
2020s
6.9 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Ezra, American Fiction, The Good Nurse — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
6.9
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
6.9
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1990s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Music of the Heart, Everyone Says I Love You.
Most productive era
2000s
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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.61 film | 6.54 films | 6.02 films | 6.94 films |
| Action | — | — | 5.32 films | — |
| Thriller | — | 6.73 films | 5.82 films | 6.61 film |
| Comedy | 6.51 film | 5.91 film | — | 7.12 films |
| Crime | — | 7.11 film | 5.51 film | 6.91 film |
| Romance | 6.51 film | 6.32 films | — | — |
| Horror | — | — | 6.31 film | 6.61 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Hospital Dancer.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2023American Fiction
7.3 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
2024Ezra
The current state of the argument, as Margo.
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.
14 of 14 films
as Lorraine
Directed by Cord Jefferson
as Grader
Directed by Sidney Lumet
as Vivian Neal
Directed by Tobias Lindholm
as Nurse
Directed by Carlo Mirabella-Davis
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
Lorraine
American Fiction (2023)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Lorraine gives Myra Lucretia Taylor a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Grader
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007)
Performance score7.0
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Grader is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Margo
Ezra (2024)
Performance score6.8
Ezra asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Margo is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Vivian Neal
The Good Nurse (2022)
Performance score6.8
The Good Nurse asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Vivian Neal 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 Lorraine
Start here. American Fiction is the clearest statement of what Myra Lucretia Taylor does — accessible, 117 minutes, and rated 7.3 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Myra 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.
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007)
Keeps the drama register of American Fiction but asks for a colder reading of it.
Swallow (2020)
Keeps the drama register of Before the Devil Knows You're Dead but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Good Nurse (2022)
Keeps the drama register of Swallow but asks for a colder reading of it.
Ezra (2024)
Keeps the drama register of The Good Nurse but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Woody Allen
Director
1 film together
Notably Everyone Says I Love You
Wes Craven
Director
1 film together
Notably Music of the Heart
Adrian Lyne
Director
1 film together
Notably Unfaithful
Roger Michell
Director
1 film together
Notably Changing Lanes
Sidney Lumet
Director
1 film together
Notably Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
Rebecca Miller
Director
1 film together
Notably The Private Lives of Pippa Lee
Peter Hedges
Director
1 film together
Notably Ben Is Back
Carlo Mirabella-Davis
Director
1 film together
Notably Swallow
Tobias Lindholm
Director
1 film together
Notably The Good Nurse
Cord Jefferson
Director
1 film together
Notably American Fiction
Tony Goldwyn
Director
1 film together
Notably Ezra
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Cord Jefferson
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
American FictionSidney Lumet
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Before the Devil Knows You're DeadTony Goldwyn
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
EzraTobias Lindholm
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Good NurseAdrian Lyne
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
UnfaithfulCarlo Mirabella-Davis
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SwallowPeter Hedges
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Ben Is BackWes Craven
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Music of the HeartWoody Allen
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Everyone Says I Love YouRoger Michell
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Changing LanesRebecca Miller
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 Private Lives of Pippa LeeSix 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
American Fiction
as Lorraine
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Unfaithful
as Gloria
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
American Fiction
as Lorraine
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Music of the Heart
as Beverly
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
American Fiction
as Lorraine
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. Myra Lucretia Taylor 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
28 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
11 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
The Good Nurse
as Vivian Neal
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Good Nurse
as Vivian Neal
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Unfaithful
as Gloria
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Good Nurse
as Vivian Neal
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
American Fiction
as Lorraine
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
See You Yesterday
as Gloria Thomas
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee
as Night Nurse
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee
as Night Nurse
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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