Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#6872
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Scott Cohen represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 33 years in, and Scott is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Scott Cohen appears in 11 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Scott. Jacob's Ladder is the clearest case: a film rated 7.2 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 drama, mystery, horror. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Robert Smigel, Adrian Grünberg, Edward Zwick and others, Scott Cohen 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.
Jacob's Ladder (1990) as Resident Doctor · Gia (1998) as Mike Mansfield · Love & Other Drugs (2010) as Ted Goldstein
Career snapshot
Ranked #6872 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
11
1990–2023
Career length
33 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.2
Jacob's Ladder
Average Nutevio score
5.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.4
Jacob's Ladder
Most frequent director
Robert Smigel
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Robert Smigel
Most common genre
Drama
8 titles
Average runtime
1h 35m
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
6.4
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
1990s
7.2 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Gia, Jacob's Ladder — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
7.2
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
7.2
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. Gia, Jacob's Ladder.
Most productive era
2010s
5 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 | 7.22 films | 6.81 film | 6.63 films | 2.02 films |
| Action | — | — | 6.61 film | — |
| Thriller | — | — | 6.22 films | — |
| Comedy | — | 6.01 film | 6.32 films | — |
| Crime | — | — | 6.61 film | — |
| Romance | 7.11 film | — | 7.01 film | — |
| Horror | 7.21 film | — | 5.71 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
1990Jacob's Ladder
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Resident Doctor. 7.2 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
2023A Shattering
The current state of the argument, as Douglas.
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.
11 of 11 films
as Resident Doctor
Directed by Adrian Lyne
as Mike Mansfield
Directed by Michael Cristofer
as Ted Goldstein
Directed by Edward Zwick
as Jack Woolf
Directed by Don Roos
as Music Conductor
Directed by Kirk Jones
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
Resident Doctor
Jacob's Ladder (1990)
Performance score7.1
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Resident Doctor gives Scott Cohen a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Mike Mansfield
Gia (1998)
Performance score7.0
Gia asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mike Mansfield is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Ted Goldstein
Love & Other Drugs (2010)
Performance score6.9
Love & Other Drugs asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Ted Goldstein is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Jack Woolf
The Other Woman (2010)
Performance score6.7
The Other Woman asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Jack Woolf 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 Resident Doctor
Start here. Jacob's Ladder is the clearest statement of what Scott Cohen does — accessible, 113 minutes, and rated 7.2 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Scott 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.
Gia (1998)
Keeps the drama register of Jacob's Ladder but asks for a colder reading of it.
Everybody's Fine (2009)
Keeps the drama register of Gia but asks for a colder reading of it.
Love & Other Drugs (2010)
Keeps the drama register of Everybody's Fine but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Other Woman (2010)
Keeps the drama register of Love & Other Drugs but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Adrian Lyne
Director
1 film together
Notably Jacob's Ladder
Michael Cristofer
Director
1 film together
Notably Gia
Kirk Jones
Director
1 film together
Notably Everybody's Fine
Don Roos
Director
1 film together
Notably The Other Woman
Edward Zwick
Director
1 film together
Notably Love & Other Drugs
Adrian Grünberg
Director
1 film together
Notably Get the Gringo
Robert Smigel
Director
1 film together
Notably The Week Of
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Adrian Lyne
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Jacob's LadderMichael Cristofer
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
GiaEdward Zwick
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Love & Other DrugsKirk Jones
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Everybody's FineAdrian Grünberg
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Get the GringoDon Roos
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Other WomanRobert Smigel
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Week OfSix 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
Gia
as Mike Mansfield
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Gia
as Mike Mansfield
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Jacob's Ladder
as Resident Doctor
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Everybody's Fine
as Music Conductor
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Jacob's Ladder
as Resident Doctor
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. Scott Cohen 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
33 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
8 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
Jacob's Ladder
as Resident Doctor
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Jacob's Ladder
as Resident Doctor
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Gia
as Mike Mansfield
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Braid
as Detective Siegel
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Get the Gringo
as Frank's Lawyer
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Get the Gringo
as Frank's Lawyer
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Love & Other Drugs
as Ted Goldstein
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Week Of
as Ron Elliman
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Zach Grenier
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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