Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#2608
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Clea DuVall represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 27 years in, and Clea is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Clea DuVall appears in 14 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Clea. Zodiac 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 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, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Rachel Lee Goldenberg, Clea DuVall, Ben Affleck and others, Clea DuVall 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.
Zodiac (2007) as Linda del Buono · Girl, Interrupted (1999) as Georgina · Argo (2012) as Cora Lijek
Career snapshot
Ranked #2608 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
14
1998–2025
Career length
27 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.7
Zodiac
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.6
Girl, Interrupted
Most frequent director
Rachel Lee Goldenberg
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Rachel Lee Goldenberg
Most common genre
Drama
9 titles
Average runtime
1h 49m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.9
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
2010s
6.8 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. The Intervention, Argo, Conviction — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.8
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.7
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. The Astronaut's Wife, Girl, Interrupted, She's All That.
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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.62 films | 6.83 films | 6.83 films | 6.61 film |
| Action | — | 5.21 film | — | — |
| Thriller | 5.61 film | 6.84 films | 7.31 film | — |
| Comedy | 6.31 film | 7.01 film | 5.91 film | — |
| Crime | — | 7.52 films | — | — |
| Romance | 6.31 film | 6.52 films | — | — |
| Horror | 6.71 film | 5.62 films | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1998The Faculty
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Stokely 'Stokes' Mitchell.
Career peak
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
2007Zodiac
7.7 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
2025Swiped
The current state of the argument, as Charlotte.
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 Linda del Buono
Directed by David Fincher
as Jen
Directed by Unknown
as Cora Lijek
Directed by Ben Affleck
as Claudia
Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu
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
Georgina
Girl, Interrupted (1999)
Performance score7.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Georgina gives Clea DuVall a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Linda del Buono
Zodiac (2007)
Performance score7.5
Zodiac asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Linda del Buono is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Jen
Ten Inch Hero (2007)
Performance score7.4
Ten Inch Hero asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Jen is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Cora Lijek
Argo (2012)
Performance score7.2
Argo asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Cora Lijek 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 Georgina
Start here. Girl, Interrupted is the clearest statement of what Clea DuVall does — accessible, 127 minutes, and rated 7.6 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Clea 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.
21 Grams (2003)
Keeps the drama register of Girl, Interrupted but asks for a colder reading of it.
Zodiac (2007)
Keeps the crime register of 21 Grams but asks for a colder reading of it.
Ten Inch Hero (2007)
A deliberate change of key after Zodiac — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Argo (2012)
Keeps the drama register of Ten Inch Hero but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Robert Rodriguez
Director
1 film together
Notably The Faculty
Robert Iscove
Director
1 film together
Notably She's All That
James Mangold
Director
1 film together
Notably Girl, Interrupted
Rand Ravich
Director
1 film together
Notably The Astronaut's Wife
John Carpenter
Director
1 film together
Notably Ghosts of Mars
Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Director
1 film together
Notably 21 Grams
Takashi Shimizu
Director
1 film together
Notably The Grudge
David Fincher
Director
1 film together
Notably Zodiac
Rodrigo García
Director
1 film together
Notably Passengers
Tony Goldwyn
Director
1 film together
Notably Conviction
Ben Affleck
Director
1 film together
Notably Argo
Clea DuVall
Director
1 film together
Notably The Intervention
Rachel Lee Goldenberg
Director
1 film together
Notably Swiped
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
David Fincher
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
ZodiacJames Mangold
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Girl, InterruptedBen Affleck
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
ArgoAlejandro G. Iñárritu
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
21 GramsTony Goldwyn
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
ConvictionRobert Rodriguez
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The FacultyRachel Lee Goldenberg
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SwipedRobert Iscove
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
She's All ThatRodrigo García
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
PassengersClea DuVall
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 InterventionTakashi Shimizu
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 GrudgeRand Ravich
Director
1 film together · 5.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Astronaut's WifeJohn Carpenter
Director
1 film together · 5.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Ghosts of MarsSix 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
Girl, Interrupted
as Georgina
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Ten Inch Hero
as Jen
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Zodiac
as Linda del Buono
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Swiped
as Charlotte
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Girl, Interrupted
as Georgina
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. Clea DuVall 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
27 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
9 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
Zodiac
as Linda del Buono
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Zodiac
as Linda del Buono
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Swiped
as Charlotte
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Zodiac
as Linda del Buono
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Zodiac
as Linda del Buono
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Ghosts of Mars
as Bashira Kincaid
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Ten Inch Hero
as Jen
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Zodiac
as Linda del Buono
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
Which Clea DuVall performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
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Reference
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