Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#19958
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Odessa Young 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.
Odessa Young appears in 13 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Odessa. The Professor is the clearest case: a film rated 6.8 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, quiet performance, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for mystery, drama, thriller. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Thordur Palsson, Scott Cooper, Justin Kurzel and others, Odessa Young 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.
The Professor (2019) as Olivia Brown · Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (2025) as Faye Romano · The Order (2024) as Zillah Craig
Career snapshot
Ranked #19958 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
13
2017–2027
Career length
10 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.8
The Professor
Average Nutevio score
5.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
6.8
The Professor
Most frequent director
Thordur Palsson
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Thordur Palsson
Most common genre
Drama
10 titles
Average runtime
1h 32m
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
6.1
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
2010s
6.3 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. The Professor, A Million Little Pieces, Assassination Nation — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.3
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.3
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. The Professor, A Million Little Pieces, Assassination Nation.
Most productive era
2020s
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 | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.33 films | 5.17 films |
| Thriller | 6.12 films | 4.55 films |
| Comedy | 6.52 films | — |
| Crime | — | 6.61 film |
| Romance | — | 5.41 film |
| Horror | 6.31 film | 5.81 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2017Sweet Virginia
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Maggie Russell.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2019The Professor
6.8 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
2027Harmonia
The current state of the argument, as Jo Cooper.
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.
13 of 13 films
as Olivia Brown
Directed by Unknown
as Lily Colson
Directed by Sam Levinson
as Zillah Craig
Directed by Justin Kurzel
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
Olivia Brown
The Professor (2019)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Olivia Brown gives Odessa Young a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Lily Colson
Assassination Nation (2018)
Performance score7.0
Assassination Nation asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Lily Colson is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Faye Romano
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (2025)
Performance score6.8
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Faye Romano is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Zillah Craig
The Order (2024)
Performance score6.8
The Order asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Zillah Craig 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 Olivia Brown
Start here. The Professor is the clearest statement of what Odessa Young does — accessible, 90 minutes, and rated 6.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Odessa 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.
Assassination Nation (2018)
Keeps the comedy register of The Professor but asks for a colder reading of it.
A Million Little Pieces (2019)
A deliberate change of key after Assassination Nation — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Order (2024)
Keeps the drama register of A Million Little Pieces but asks for a colder reading of it.
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (2025)
Keeps the drama register of The Order but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Jamie M. Dagg
Director
1 film together
Notably Sweet Virginia
Sam Levinson
Director
1 film together
Notably Assassination Nation
Sam Taylor-Johnson
Director
1 film together
Notably A Million Little Pieces
Josephine Decker
Director
1 film together
Notably Shirley
Eva Husson
Director
1 film together
Notably Mothering Sunday
Justin Kurzel
Director
1 film together
Notably The Order
Scott Cooper
Director
1 film together
Notably Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
Thordur Palsson
Director
1 film together
Notably The Damned
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Scott Cooper
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Springsteen: Deliver Me from NowhereJustin Kurzel
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The OrderSam Levinson
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Assassination NationSam Taylor-Johnson
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Million Little PiecesJosephine Decker
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
ShirleyJamie M. Dagg
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Sweet VirginiaThordur Palsson
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The DamnedEva Husson
Director
1 film together · 5.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mothering SundaySix 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
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
as Faye Romano
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
as Faye Romano
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 Professor
as Olivia Brown
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Bonnie
as Self
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Professor
as Olivia Brown
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. Odessa Young 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
10 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
Shirley
as Rose Nemser / Paula
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Order
as Zillah Craig
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
as Faye Romano
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Shirley
as Rose Nemser / Paula
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Professor
as Olivia Brown
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Professor
as Olivia Brown
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
as Faye Romano
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Assassination Nation
as Lily Colson
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: crime and drama
Zach Grenier
Built a career in the same territory: crime and mystery
Richmond Arquette
Built a career in the same territory: crime and mystery
Bob Stephenson
Built a career in the same territory: crime and mystery
Robert Downey Jr.
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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