Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#35168
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Valerie Perrine represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 28 years in, and Valerie is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Valerie Perrine appears in 7 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Valerie. Superman 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, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, comedy, music. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Nancy Meyers, Mark Christopher, Hal Needham and others, Valerie Perrine 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.
Superman (1978) as Eve Teschmacher · Superman II (1980) as Eve Teschmacher · What Women Want (2000) as Margo
Career snapshot
Ranked #35168 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
7
1972–2000
Career length
28 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.2
Superman
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.2
Superman
Most frequent director
Nancy Meyers
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Nancy Meyers
Most common genre
Comedy
3 titles
Average runtime
1h 55m
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
6.6
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
1970s
6.6 average MV
The 1970s are where the work and the material meet. The Electric Horseman, Superman, Slaughterhouse-Five — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1970s
6.6
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1970s
6.6
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1970s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Electric Horseman, Superman, Slaughterhouse-Five.
Most productive era
1970s
3 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 | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.32 films | — | 6.11 film | — |
| Action | 7.21 film | 6.52 films | — | — |
| Comedy | 6.21 film | 6.31 film | — | 6.51 film |
| Romance | 6.21 film | — | — | 6.51 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Montana Wildhack.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1978Superman
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
2000What Women Want
The current state of the argument, as Margo.
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.
7 of 7 films
as Eve Teschmacher
Directed by Richard Donner
as Eve Teschmacher
Directed by Richard Lester
as Charlotta
Directed by Sydney Pollack
as Montana Wildhack
Directed by George Roy Hill
as Margo
Directed by Nancy Meyers
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
Eve Teschmacher
Superman (1978)
Performance score7.1
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Eve Teschmacher gives Valerie Perrine a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Eve Teschmacher
Superman II (1980)
Performance score6.7
Superman II asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Eve Teschmacher is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Charlotta
The Electric Horseman (1979)
Performance score6.7
The Electric Horseman asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Charlotta is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Montana Wildhack
Slaughterhouse-Five (1972)
Performance score6.6
Slaughterhouse-Five asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Montana Wildhack 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 Eve Teschmacher
Start here. Superman is the clearest statement of what Valerie Perrine does — accessible, 144 minutes, and rated 7.2 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Valerie 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.
Slaughterhouse-Five (1972)
Keeps the science fiction register of Superman but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Electric Horseman (1979)
Keeps the drama register of Slaughterhouse-Five but asks for a colder reading of it.
Superman II (1980)
A deliberate change of key after The Electric Horseman — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
What Women Want (2000)
A deliberate change of key after Superman II — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
George Roy Hill
Director
1 film together
Notably Slaughterhouse-Five
Richard Donner
Director
1 film together
Notably Superman
Sydney Pollack
Director
1 film together
Notably The Electric Horseman
Richard Lester
Director
1 film together
Notably Superman II
Hal Needham
Director
1 film together
Notably The Cannonball Run
Mark Christopher
Director
1 film together
Notably 54
Nancy Meyers
Director
1 film together
Notably What Women Want
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Richard Donner
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SupermanRichard Lester
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Superman IINancy Meyers
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
What Women WantGeorge Roy Hill
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Slaughterhouse-FiveHal Needham
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Cannonball RunSydney Pollack
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 Electric HorsemanMark Christopher
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
54Six 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
Superman
as Eve Teschmacher
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
54
as Elaine's Patron
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Superman
as Eve Teschmacher
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
54
as Elaine's Patron
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Superman
as Eve Teschmacher
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. Valerie Perrine 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
28 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
3 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
Superman
as Eve Teschmacher
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Superman
as Eve Teschmacher
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
54
as Elaine's Patron
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Superman
as Eve Teschmacher
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Superman
as Eve Teschmacher
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Superman
as Eve Teschmacher
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Electric Horseman
as Charlotta
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
54
as Elaine's Patron
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Reference
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