Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#4834
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Stephanie Kurtzuba 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.
Stephanie Kurtzuba appears in 11 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Stephanie. The Wolf of Wall Street is the clearest case: a film rated 8.3 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 romance, comedy, action. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Greg Berlanti, Peter Atencio, Cory Finley and others, Stephanie Kurtzuba 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 Wolf of Wall Street (2013) as Kimmie Belzer · Making 'The Irishman' (2020) as Self · Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011) as Elaine Black
Career snapshot
Ranked #4834 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
11
2009–2024
Career length
15 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.3
The Wolf of Wall Street
Average Nutevio score
6.3
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.0
The Wolf of Wall Street
Most frequent director
Greg Berlanti
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Greg Berlanti
Most common genre
Comedy
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 43m
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
2000s
6.7 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Away We Go — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.7
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.7
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2000s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Away We Go.
Most productive era
2010s
7 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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.71 film | 6.76 films | — |
| Action | — | — | 5.71 film |
| Comedy | 6.71 film | 5.64 films | 6.32 films |
| Crime | — | 7.52 films | 5.71 film |
| Romance | 6.71 film | — | 6.81 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2009Away We Go
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Performance Mom.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
8.3 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
The current state of the argument, as Jolene Vanning.
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 Kimmie Belzer
Directed by Martin Scorsese
as Jolene Vanning
Directed by Greg Berlanti
as Carol Schweitzer
Directed by Cory Finley
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
Kimmie Belzer
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
Performance score8.0
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Kimmie Belzer gives Stephanie Kurtzuba a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Self
Making 'The Irishman' (2020)
Performance score6.9
Making 'The Irishman' asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Elaine Black
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011)
Performance score6.9
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Elaine Black is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Jolene Vanning
Fly Me to the Moon (2024)
Performance score6.7
Fly Me to the Moon asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Jolene Vanning 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 Kimmie Belzer
Start here. The Wolf of Wall Street is the clearest statement of what Stephanie Kurtzuba does — accessible, 180 minutes, and rated 8.3 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Stephanie 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.
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011)
Keeps the drama register of The Wolf of Wall Street but asks for a colder reading of it.
Bad Education (2019)
Keeps the drama register of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close but asks for a colder reading of it.
Making 'The Irishman' (2020)
A deliberate change of key after Bad Education — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Fly Me to the Moon (2024)
A deliberate change of key after Making 'The Irishman' — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Sam Mendes
Director
1 film together
Notably Away We Go
Stephen Daldry
Director
1 film together
Notably Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
Martin Scorsese
Director
1 film together
Notably The Wolf of Wall Street
Will Gluck
Director
1 film together
Notably Annie
Eric Ian Goldberg
Director
1 film together
Notably Fault
Cory Finley
Director
1 film together
Notably Bad Education
Peter Atencio
Director
1 film together
Notably The Machine
Greg Berlanti
Director
1 film together
Notably Fly Me to the Moon
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Martin Scorsese
Director
1 film together · 8.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Wolf of Wall StreetStephen Daldry
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Extremely Loud & Incredibly CloseGreg Berlanti
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fly Me to the MoonCory Finley
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Bad EducationSam Mendes
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Away We GoWill Gluck
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
AnniePeter Atencio
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The MachineEric Ian Goldberg
Director
1 film together · 2.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
FaultSix 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
The Wolf of Wall Street
as Kimmie Belzer
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Away We Go
as Performance Mom
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 Wolf of Wall Street
as Kimmie Belzer
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
as Elaine Black
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Wolf of Wall Street
as Kimmie Belzer
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. Stephanie Kurtzuba 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
The Wolf of Wall Street
as Kimmie Belzer
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Wolf of Wall Street
as Kimmie Belzer
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Away We Go
as Performance Mom
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Wolf of Wall Street
as Kimmie Belzer
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Wolf of Wall Street
as Kimmie Belzer
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Machine
as LeeAnn
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Wolf of Wall Street
as Kimmie Belzer
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Wolf of Wall Street
as Kimmie Belzer
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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Works with the same directors — Martin Scorsese
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Built a career in the same territory: family and comedy
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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