Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#11686
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Zoe Kazan 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.
Zoe Kazan appears in 14 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Zoe. Fracture is the clearest case: a film rated 7.3 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 drama, history, fantasy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Maria Schrader, Lone Scherfig, Joel Coen and others, Zoe Kazan 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.
Fracture (2007) as Mona · She Said (2022) as Jodi Kantor · The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) as Alice Longabaugh (segment "The Gal Who Got Rattled")
Career snapshot
Ranked #11686 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
14
2007–2022
Career length
15 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.3
Fracture
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
Fracture
Most frequent director
Maria Schrader
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Maria Schrader
Most common genre
Drama
12 titles
Average runtime
1h 52m
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
6.4
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
6.6 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. It's Complicated, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, Me and Orson Welles — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.6
Across 6 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.6
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. It's Complicated, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, Me and Orson Welles.
Most productive era
2000s
6 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 | 6.54 films | 6.66 films | 6.52 films |
| Thriller | 7.02 films | — | — |
| Comedy | 6.33 films | 6.74 films | — |
| Crime | 6.81 film | — | — |
| Romance | 6.53 films | 6.92 films | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Angie.
Highest rated performance
2007Fracture
7.3 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak · Most recent film
2022She Said
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once. The current state of the argument, as Jodi Kantor.
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.
14 of 14 films
as Jodi Kantor
Directed by Maria Schrader
as Ruby
Directed by Jonathan Dayton
as Chantry
Directed by Michael Dowse
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
Jodi Kantor
She Said (2022)
Performance score7.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Jodi Kantor gives Zoe Kazan a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Ruby
Ruby Sparks (2012)
Performance score7.5
Ruby Sparks asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Ruby is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Mona
Fracture (2007)
Performance score7.2
Fracture asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mona is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Chantry
What If (2013)
Performance score7.1
What If asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Chantry 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 Jodi Kantor
Start here. She Said is the clearest statement of what Zoe Kazan does — accessible, 129 minutes, and rated 7.2 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Zoe 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.
Fracture (2007)
A deliberate change of key after She Said — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Ruby Sparks (2012)
A deliberate change of key after Fracture — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
What If (2013)
Keeps the romance register of Ruby Sparks but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Kindness of Strangers (2019)
Keeps the drama register of What If but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Gregory Hoblit
Director
1 film together
Notably Fracture
Paul Haggis
Director
1 film together
Notably In the Valley of Elah
Sam Mendes
Director
1 film together
Notably Revolutionary Road
Richard Linklater
Director
1 film together
Notably Me and Orson Welles
Rebecca Miller
Director
1 film together
Notably The Private Lives of Pippa Lee
Nancy Meyers
Director
1 film together
Notably It's Complicated
Jonathan Dayton
Director
1 film together
Notably Ruby Sparks
Michael Dowse
Director
1 film together
Notably What If
David Gordon Green
Director
1 film together
Notably Our Brand Is Crisis
Joel Coen
Director
1 film together
Notably The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
Lone Scherfig
Director
1 film together
Notably The Kindness of Strangers
Maria Schrader
Director
1 film together
Notably She Said
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Gregory Hoblit
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
FractureMaria Schrader
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
She SaidJoel Coen
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Ballad of Buster ScruggsJonathan Dayton
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Ruby SparksSam Mendes
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Revolutionary RoadPaul Haggis
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
In the Valley of ElahMichael Dowse
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
What IfNancy 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
It's ComplicatedRichard Linklater
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Me and Orson WellesLone Scherfig
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 Kindness of StrangersDavid Gordon Green
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Our Brand Is CrisisRebecca Miller
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Private Lives of Pippa LeeSix 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
She Said
as Jodi Kantor
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
She Said
as Jodi Kantor
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Fracture
as Mona
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
as Alice Longabaugh (segment "The Gal Who Got Rattled")
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
She Said
as Jodi Kantor
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. Zoe Kazan 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
12 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
In the Valley of Elah
as Angie
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Fracture
as Mona
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
She Said
as Jodi Kantor
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
In the Valley of Elah
as Angie
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
as Alice Longabaugh (segment "The Gal Who Got Rattled")
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
as Alice Longabaugh (segment "The Gal Who Got Rattled")
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Ruby Sparks
as Ruby
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee
as Grace Lee
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: drama and fantasy
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: animation and comedy
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and comedy
Robert Downey Jr.
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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