Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#11452
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Susan Blu works on emotional range 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.
Susan Blu appears in 4 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Susan. Finding Nemo is the clearest case: a film rated 8.1 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are emotional range, transformation, versatility. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for comedy, adventure, family. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Kirk Wise and others, Susan Blu 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.
Finding Nemo (2003) as Additional Voices (voice) · Cars (2006) as Additional Voices (voice) · The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) as Additional Voices (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #11452 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
4
1986–2006
Career length
20 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.1
Finding Nemo
Average Nutevio score
7.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.8
Finding Nemo
Most frequent director
John Lasseter
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With John Lasseter
Most common genre
Family
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 38m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.1
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
6.8
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
7.7 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Cars, Finding Nemo — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
7.7
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
7.4
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1980s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Transformers: The Movie.
Most productive era
2000s
2 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 | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 7.21 film | — |
| Action | 7.01 film | — | — |
| Comedy | — | — | 7.21 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1986The Transformers: The Movie
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Arcee (voice).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2003Finding Nemo
8.1 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
2006Cars
The current state of the argument, as Additional Voices (voice).
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 Additional Voices (voice)
Directed by Andrew Stanton
as Additional Voices (voice)
Directed by John Lasseter
as Additional Voices (voice)
Directed by Kirk Wise
as Arcee (voice)
Directed by Nelson Shin
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
Additional Voices (voice)
Finding Nemo (2003)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Additional Voices (voice) gives Susan Blu a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Additional Voices (voice)
Cars (2006)
Performance score7.1
Cars asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Additional Voices (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Additional Voices (voice)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
Performance score7.1
The Hunchback of Notre Dame asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Additional Voices (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Arcee (voice)
The Transformers: The Movie (1986)
Performance score6.9
The Transformers: The Movie asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Arcee (voice) 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 Additional Voices (voice)
Start here. Finding Nemo is the clearest statement of what Susan Blu does — accessible, 100 minutes, and rated 8.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Susan 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.
The Transformers: The Movie (1986)
Keeps the adventure register of Finding Nemo but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
Keeps the family register of The Transformers: The Movie but asks for a colder reading of it.
Cars (2006)
Keeps the family register of The Hunchback of Notre Dame but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Nelson Shin
Director
1 film together
Notably The Transformers: The Movie
Kirk Wise
Director
1 film together
Notably The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Andrew Stanton
Director
1 film together
Notably Finding Nemo
John Lasseter
Director
1 film together
Notably Cars
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Andrew Stanton
Director
1 film together · 8.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Finding NemoJohn Lasseter
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
CarsKirk Wise
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Hunchback of Notre DameNelson Shin
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Transformers: The MovieSix 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
Finding Nemo
as Additional Voices (voice)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
as Additional Voices (voice)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Finding Nemo
as Additional Voices (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Cars
as Additional Voices (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Finding Nemo
as Additional Voices (voice)
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. Susan Blu 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
20 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.
Family Legend
Awarded
4 catalogue titles in family, 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
Finding Nemo
as Additional Voices (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Finding Nemo
as Additional Voices (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
as Additional Voices (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Cars
as Additional Voices (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Finding Nemo
as Additional Voices (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Transformers: The Movie
as Arcee (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
as Additional Voices (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Finding Nemo
as Additional Voices (voice)
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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