Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#2913
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Carrie Preston represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 26 years in, and Carrie is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Carrie Preston appears in 11 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Carrie. The Holdovers 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, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for comedy, drama, romance. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Alexander Payne, Kyra Sedgwick, John Logan and others, Carrie Preston 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.
The Holdovers (2023) as Miss Lydia Crane · To the Bone (2017) as Susan · Doubt (2008) as Christine Hurley
Career snapshot
Ranked #2913 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
11
1997–2023
Career length
26 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.6
The Holdovers
Average Nutevio score
6.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.6
The Holdovers
Most frequent director
Alexander Payne
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Alexander Payne
Most common genre
Drama
8 titles
Average runtime
1h 48m
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
2010s
7.2 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. To the Bone — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.2
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
7.2
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. Mercury Rising, My Best Friend's Wedding.
Most productive era
2000s
5 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 | 6.31 film | 6.74 films | 7.21 film | 6.82 films |
| Action | 6.31 film | — | — | — |
| Thriller | 6.31 film | — | — | — |
| Comedy | 6.61 film | 5.71 film | — | 6.82 films |
| Crime | 6.31 film | — | — | — |
| Romance | 6.61 film | 6.72 films | — | 6.01 film |
| Horror | — | 5.71 film | — | 4.71 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Amanda Newhouse.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2023The Holdovers
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
2023Space Oddity
The current state of the argument, as Jane McAllister.
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.
11 of 11 films
as Miss Lydia Crane
Directed by Alexander Payne
as Christine Hurley
Directed by John Patrick Shanley
as Idalyn Greaves
Directed by Robert Redford
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
Miss Lydia Crane
The Holdovers (2023)
Performance score7.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Miss Lydia Crane gives Carrie Preston a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Susan
To the Bone (2017)
Performance score7.6
To the Bone asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Susan is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Christine Hurley
Doubt (2008)
Performance score7.1
Doubt asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Christine Hurley is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Sally
Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)
Performance score6.7
Vicky Cristina Barcelona asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Sally 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 Miss Lydia Crane
Start here. The Holdovers is the clearest statement of what Carrie Preston does — accessible, 133 minutes, and rated 7.6 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Carrie 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 Legend of Bagger Vance (2000)
Keeps the drama register of The Holdovers but asks for a colder reading of it.
Doubt (2008)
Keeps the drama register of The Legend of Bagger Vance but asks for a colder reading of it.
Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)
Keeps the drama register of Doubt but asks for a colder reading of it.
To the Bone (2017)
Keeps the drama register of Vicky Cristina Barcelona but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
P.J. Hogan
Director
1 film together
Notably My Best Friend's Wedding
Robert Redford
Director
1 film together
Notably The Legend of Bagger Vance
Frank Oz
Director
1 film together
Notably The Stepford Wives
John Patrick Shanley
Director
1 film together
Notably Doubt
Alan Ball
Director
1 film together
Notably Towelhead
Woody Allen
Director
1 film together
Notably Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Marti Noxon
Director
1 film together
Notably To the Bone
John Logan
Director
1 film together
Notably They/Them
Kyra Sedgwick
Director
1 film together
Notably Space Oddity
Alexander Payne
Director
1 film together
Notably The Holdovers
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Alexander Payne
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The HoldoversMarti Noxon
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
To the BoneJohn Patrick Shanley
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
DoubtWoody Allen
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Vicky Cristina BarcelonaRobert Redford
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Legend of Bagger VanceP.J. Hogan
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
My Best Friend's WeddingAlan Ball
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
TowelheadKyra Sedgwick
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Space OddityFrank Oz
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Stepford WivesJohn Logan
Director
1 film together · 4.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
They/ThemSix 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
The Holdovers
as Miss Lydia Crane
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
as Sally
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
The Holdovers
as Miss Lydia Crane
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Stepford Wives
as Barbara
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Holdovers
as Miss Lydia Crane
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. Carrie Preston 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
26 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
The Holdovers
as Miss Lydia Crane
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Mercury Rising
as Emily Lang
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
as Sally
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
They/Them
as Cora Whistler
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Holdovers
as Miss Lydia Crane
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Mercury Rising
as Emily Lang
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
as Sally
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Space Oddity
as Jane McAllister
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Christian Bale
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Tom Hanks
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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