Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#55071
of 909177 performers
Top 10%
Rita Tushingham represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 58 years in, and Rita is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Rita Tushingham appears in 4 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Rita. Last Night in Soho 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 quiet performance, transformation, versatility. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for war, action, mystery. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Jesse V. Johnson, Edgar Wright, Julius Berg and others, Rita Tushingham 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.
Last Night in Soho (2021) as Peggy Turner · Doctor Zhivago (1965) as The Girl · Boudica (2023) as Green Druid
Career snapshot
Ranked #55071 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
4
1965–2023
Career length
58 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.3
Last Night in Soho
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.5
Doctor Zhivago
Most frequent director
Jesse V. Johnson
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Jesse V. Johnson
Most common genre
War
2 titles
Average runtime
2h 8m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.9
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
6.9
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
7.3 average MV
The 1960s are where the work and the material meet. Doctor Zhivago — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1960s
7.3
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1960s
7.5
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. Doctor Zhivago.
Most productive era
2020s
3 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 | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.31 film | 7.31 film |
| Action | — | 5.81 film |
| Thriller | — | 6.42 films |
| Romance | 7.31 film | — |
| Horror | — | 6.42 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance
1965Doctor Zhivago
Where our catalogue meets this career, as The Girl. 7.3 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2023Boudica
The current state of the argument, as Green Druid.
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.
4 of 4 films
as Peggy Turner
Directed by Edgar Wright
as The Girl
Directed by David Lean
as Green Druid
Directed by Jesse V. Johnson
as Ellen Huggins
Directed by Julius Berg
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
Peggy Turner
Last Night in Soho (2021)
Performance score7.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Peggy Turner gives Rita Tushingham a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
The Girl
Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Performance score7.2
Doctor Zhivago asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. The Girl is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Green Druid
Boudica (2023)
Performance score6.5
Boudica asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Green Druid is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Ellen Huggins
The Owners (2020)
Performance score6.5
The Owners asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Ellen Huggins 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 Peggy Turner
Start here. Last Night in Soho is the clearest statement of what Rita Tushingham 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 Rita 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.
Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Keeps the drama register of Last Night in Soho but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Owners (2020)
A deliberate change of key after Doctor Zhivago — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Boudica (2023)
A deliberate change of key after The Owners — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Edgar Wright
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Last Night in SohoDavid Lean
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Doctor ZhivagoJesse V. Johnson
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BoudicaJulius Berg
Director
1 film together · 5.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The OwnersSix 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
Last Night in Soho
as Peggy Turner
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Doctor Zhivago
as The Girl
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Doctor Zhivago
as The Girl
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Doctor Zhivago
as The Girl
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Last Night in Soho
as Peggy Turner
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. Rita Tushingham 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
58 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.
War Legend
Awarded
2 catalogue titles in war, 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
Last Night in Soho
as Peggy Turner
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Last Night in Soho
as Peggy Turner
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Doctor Zhivago
as The Girl
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Last Night in Soho
as Peggy Turner
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Last Night in Soho
as Peggy Turner
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Boudica
as Green Druid
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Doctor Zhivago
as The Girl
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Last Night in Soho
as Peggy Turner
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Reference
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