Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#5065
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Tamala Jones represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 29 years in, and Tamala is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Tamala Jones appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Tamala. Ordinary Angels is the clearest case: a film rated 7.7 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, versatility, emotional range. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for drama, romance, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Jon Gunn, Thembi Banks, Adam Shankman and others, Tamala Jones 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.
Ordinary Angels (2024) as Rose · Up in the Air (2009) as Karen Barnes · Every Breath She Takes (2023) as Jules
Career snapshot
Ranked #5065 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
1995–2024
Career length
29 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.7
Ordinary Angels
Average Nutevio score
5.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.7
Ordinary Angels
Most frequent director
Jon Gunn
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Jon Gunn
Most common genre
Drama
8 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
1990s
6.4 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. How to Make an American Quilt — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
6.4
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
6.4
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. How to Make an American Quilt.
Most productive era
2020s
4 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 | 6.41 film | 6.32 films | 5.61 film | 5.24 films |
| Thriller | — | — | — | 6.61 film |
| Comedy | — | 5.52 films | 5.92 films | 3.11 film |
| Romance | 6.41 film | 6.91 film | 5.92 films | 3.11 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1995How to Make an American Quilt
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Anna's Great Grandmother.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2024Ordinary Angels
7.7 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. The current state of the argument, as Rose.
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.
10 of 10 films
as Karen Barnes
Directed by Jason Reitman
as Mrs. McCleary
Directed by Thembi Banks
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
Rose
Ordinary Angels (2024)
Performance score7.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Rose gives Tamala Jones a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Jules
Every Breath She Takes (2023)
Performance score7.3
Every Breath She Takes asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Jules is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Karen Barnes
Up in the Air (2009)
Performance score6.8
Up in the Air asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Karen Barnes is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Mrs. McCleary
Young. Wild. Free. (2023)
Performance score6.5
Young. Wild. Free. asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mrs. McCleary 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 Rose
Start here. Ordinary Angels is the clearest statement of what Tamala Jones does — accessible, 118 minutes, and rated 7.7 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Tamala 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.
Up in the Air (2009)
Keeps the drama register of Ordinary Angels but asks for a colder reading of it.
Lola 2 (2022)
Keeps the drama register of Up in the Air but asks for a colder reading of it.
Every Breath She Takes (2023)
Same director as Lola 2, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Young. Wild. Free. (2023)
Keeps the drama register of Every Breath She Takes but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Jocelyn Moorhouse
Director
1 film together
Notably How to Make an American Quilt
Reginald Hudlin
Director
1 film together
Notably The Ladies Man
Chris Rock
Director
1 film together
Notably Head of State
Jason Reitman
Director
1 film together
Notably Up in the Air
Adam Shankman
Director
1 film together
Notably What Men Want
Thembi Banks
Director
1 film together
Notably Young. Wild. Free.
Jon Gunn
Director
1 film together
Notably Ordinary Angels
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Jon Gunn
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Ordinary AngelsJason Reitman
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Up in the AirJocelyn Moorhouse
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
How to Make an American QuiltAdam Shankman
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
What Men WantChris Rock
Director
1 film together · 5.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Head of StateReginald Hudlin
Director
1 film together · 5.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Ladies ManThembi Banks
Director
1 film together · 3.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Young. Wild. Free.Six 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
Ordinary Angels
as Rose
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Up in the Air
as Karen Barnes
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Ordinary Angels
as Rose
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
How to Make an American Quilt
as Anna's Great Grandmother
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Ordinary Angels
as Rose
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. Tamala Jones 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
29 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
Ordinary Angels
as Rose
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Ordinary Angels
as Rose
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Up in the Air
as Karen Barnes
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Every Breath She Takes
as Jules
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Ordinary Angels
as Rose
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Ordinary Angels
as Rose
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Holiday Rush
as Jocelyn 'Joss' Hawkings
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Ordinary Angels
as Rose
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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