Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#39763
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Tilly Vosburgh represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 37 years in, and Tilly is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Tilly Vosburgh appears in 8 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Tilly. Atonement is the clearest case: a film rated 7.6 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 comedy, fantasy, family. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Bob Cryer, Jennifer Perrott, Thomas Vinterberg and others, Tilly Vosburgh 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.
Atonement (2007) as Mother of Evacuees · Boy A (2008) as Shopkeeper · Far from the Madding Crowd (2015) as Mrs. Hurst
Career snapshot
Ranked #39763 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
8
1989–2026
Career length
37 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.6
Atonement
Average Nutevio score
5.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.6
Atonement
Most frequent director
Bob Cryer
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Bob Cryer
Most common genre
Drama
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 16m
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
6.5
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
7.3 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Boy A, Atonement — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
7.3
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
7.3
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. Erik the Viking.
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 | 1980s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 7.32 films | 7.01 film | 3.02 films |
| Thriller | — | — | — | 6.01 film |
| Comedy | 5.91 film | — | — | 6.01 film |
| Crime | — | 7.11 film | — | — |
| Romance | — | 7.61 film | 7.01 film | 6.01 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1989Erik the Viking
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Unn-the-Thrown-At.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2007Atonement
7.6 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
2026Joke
The current state of the argument.
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.
8 of 8 films
as Mother of Evacuees
Directed by Joe Wright
as Mary 'Momo'
Directed by Jennifer Perrott
as Shopkeeper
Directed by John Crowley
as Mrs. Hurst
Directed by Thomas Vinterberg
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
Mother of Evacuees
Atonement (2007)
Performance score7.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Mother of Evacuees gives Tilly Vosburgh a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Mary 'Momo'
The Velveteen Rabbit (2023)
Performance score7.1
The Velveteen Rabbit asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mary 'Momo' is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Shopkeeper
Boy A (2008)
Performance score7.0
Boy A asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Shopkeeper is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Mrs. Hurst
Far from the Madding Crowd (2015)
Performance score6.9
Far from the Madding Crowd asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mrs. Hurst 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 Mother of Evacuees
Start here. Atonement is the clearest statement of what Tilly Vosburgh does — accessible, 123 minutes, and rated 7.6 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Tilly 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.
Boy A (2008)
Keeps the drama register of Atonement but asks for a colder reading of it.
Far from the Madding Crowd (2015)
Keeps the drama register of Boy A but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Velveteen Rabbit (2023)
A deliberate change of key after Far from the Madding Crowd — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Joke (2026)
A deliberate change of key after The Velveteen Rabbit — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Terry Jones
Director
1 film together
Notably Erik the Viking
Joe Wright
Director
1 film together
Notably Atonement
John Crowley
Director
1 film together
Notably Boy A
Thomas Vinterberg
Director
1 film together
Notably Far from the Madding Crowd
Jennifer Perrott
Director
1 film together
Notably The Velveteen Rabbit
Bob Cryer
Director
1 film together
Notably Joke
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Joe Wright
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
AtonementJohn Crowley
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Boy AThomas Vinterberg
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Far from the Madding CrowdJennifer Perrott
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Velveteen RabbitBob Cryer
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
JokeTerry Jones
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Erik the VikingSix 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
Atonement
as Mother of Evacuees
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Atonement
as Mother of Evacuees
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Atonement
as Mother of Evacuees
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Erik the Viking
as Unn-the-Thrown-At
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Atonement
as Mother of Evacuees
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. Tilly Vosburgh 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
37 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
5 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
The Velveteen Rabbit
as Mary 'Momo'
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Boy A
as Shopkeeper
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Velveteen Rabbit
as Mary 'Momo'
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Velveteen Rabbit
as Mary 'Momo'
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Atonement
as Mother of Evacuees
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Erik the Viking
as Unn-the-Thrown-At
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Atonement
as Mother of Evacuees
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Joke
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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