Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#7596
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Paz Vega 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.
Paz Vega appears in 19 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Paz. Fireflies at El Mozote is the clearest case: a film rated 8.5 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 music, drama, war. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Paz Vega, Alfonso Pineda Ulloa, Santiago Segura and others, Paz Vega 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.
Fireflies at El Mozote (2025) as Alma · Rita (2024) as Mari · Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted (2012) as Carmen (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #7596 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
19
2006–2026
Career length
20 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.5
Fireflies at El Mozote
Average Nutevio score
5.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.5
Fireflies at El Mozote
Most frequent director
Paz Vega
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Paz Vega
Most common genre
Drama
11 titles
Average runtime
1h 32m
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
6.3
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
6.0 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. The Bra, ¡Ay, mi madre!, Rambo: Last Blood — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.0
Across 8 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.0
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. Triage, The Spirit, 10 Items or Less.
Most productive era
2010s
8 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 | 6.12 films | 6.25 films | 5.34 films |
| Action | 4.81 film | 6.32 films | 6.04 films |
| Thriller | 5.42 films | 6.43 films | 5.04 films |
| Comedy | 6.21 film | 5.84 films | 5.61 film |
| Crime | 4.81 film | 6.61 film | 4.31 film |
| Romance | — | 6.01 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
200610 Items or Less
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Scarlet.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
8.5 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
2026Perla
The current state of the argument, as Frances.
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.
19 of 19 films
as Carmen
Directed by Adrian Grünberg
as Scarlet
Directed by Brad Silberling
as Coral Baca
Directed by Michael Cuesta
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
Alma
Fireflies at El Mozote (2025)
Performance score8.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Alma gives Paz Vega a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Mari
Rita (2024)
Performance score7.2
Rita asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mari is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Carmen
Rambo: Last Blood (2019)
Performance score7.0
Rambo: Last Blood asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Carmen is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Scarlet
10 Items or Less (2006)
Performance score6.7
10 Items or Less asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Scarlet 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 Alma
Start here. Fireflies at El Mozote is the clearest statement of what Paz Vega does — accessible, 90 minutes, and rated 8.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Paz 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.
10 Items or Less (2006)
Keeps the drama register of Fireflies at El Mozote but asks for a colder reading of it.
Kill the Messenger (2014)
Keeps the drama register of 10 Items or Less but asks for a colder reading of it.
Rambo: Last Blood (2019)
Keeps the drama register of Kill the Messenger but asks for a colder reading of it.
Rita (2024)
Keeps the drama register of Rambo: Last Blood but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Brad Silberling
Director
1 film together
Notably 10 Items or Less
Frank Miller
Director
1 film together
Notably The Spirit
Eric Darnell
Director
1 film together
Notably Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted
Pedro Almodóvar
Director
1 film together
Notably I'm So Excited!
Olivier Dahan
Director
1 film together
Notably Grace of Monaco
Michael Cuesta
Director
1 film together
Notably Kill the Messenger
Isaac Florentine
Director
1 film together
Notably Acts of Vengeance
Adrian Grünberg
Director
1 film together
Notably Rambo: Last Blood
Santiago Segura
Director
1 film together
Notably The Kids Are Alright: Destination Asturias
Alfonso Pineda Ulloa
Director
1 film together
Notably There Are No Saints
Paz Vega
Director
1 film together
Notably Rita
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Paz Vega
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
RitaEric Darnell
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Madagascar 3: Europe's Most WantedMichael Cuesta
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Kill the MessengerAdrian Grünberg
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Rambo: Last BloodBrad Silberling
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
10 Items or LessIsaac Florentine
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Acts of VengeanceOlivier Dahan
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Grace of MonacoPedro Almodóvar
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
I'm So Excited!Santiago Segura
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 Kids Are Alright: Destination AsturiasAlfonso Pineda Ulloa
Director
1 film together · 5.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
There Are No SaintsFrank Miller
Director
1 film together · 4.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The SpiritSix 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
Fireflies at El Mozote
as Alma
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Grace of Monaco
as Maria Callas
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Fireflies at El Mozote
as Alma
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Kids Are Alright: Destination Asturias
as Clara
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Fireflies at El Mozote
as Alma
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. Paz Vega 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
20 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
11 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
Fireflies at El Mozote
as Alma
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Fireflies at El Mozote
as Alma
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Grace of Monaco
as Maria Callas
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Triage
as Elena Morales
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Fireflies at El Mozote
as Alma
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Acts of Vengeance
as Alma
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted
as Carmen (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
There Are No Saints
as Nadia
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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Reference
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