Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#2702
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Ana Gasteyer represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 27 years in, and Ana is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Ana Gasteyer appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Ana. Mean Girls is the clearest case: a film rated 7.4 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, music, romance. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Beth McCarthy-Miller, Clea DuVall, Andy Fickman and others, Ana Gasteyer 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.
Mean Girls (2004) as Cady's Mom · Happiest Season (2020) as Harry Levin · Robot & Frank (2012) as Shoplady
Career snapshot
Ranked #2702 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
1999–2026
Career length
27 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.4
Mean Girls
Average Nutevio score
6.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.2
Mean Girls
Most frequent director
Beth McCarthy-Miller
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Beth McCarthy-Miller
Most common genre
Comedy
10 titles
Average runtime
1h 50m
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
2000s
6.7 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Mean Girls, What Women Want, Woman on Top — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.7
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
6.6
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. Dick.
Most productive era
2000s
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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.82 films | — | — |
| Action | — | — | 5.21 film | — |
| Comedy | 6.01 film | 6.73 films | 6.03 films | 6.63 films |
| Crime | — | — | 6.91 film | — |
| Romance | — | 6.32 films | — | 7.11 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1999Dick
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Rose Mary Woods.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2004Mean Girls
7.4 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
2026Never Change!
The current state of the argument, as Principal Nadler.
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.
10 of 10 films
as Cady's Mom
Directed by Mark Waters
as Harry Levin
Directed by Clea DuVall
as Shoplady
Directed by Jake Schreier
as Principal Nadler
Directed by Unknown
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
Cady's Mom
Mean Girls (2004)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Cady's Mom gives Ana Gasteyer a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Harry Levin
Happiest Season (2020)
Performance score7.0
Happiest Season asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Harry Levin is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Shoplady
Robot & Frank (2012)
Performance score6.8
Robot & Frank asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Shoplady is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Self
SNL50: The Homecoming Concert (2025)
Performance score6.6
SNL50: The Homecoming Concert asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self 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 Cady's Mom
Start here. Mean Girls is the clearest statement of what Ana Gasteyer does — accessible, 97 minutes, and rated 7.4 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Ana 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.
Robot & Frank (2012)
Keeps the comedy register of Mean Girls but asks for a colder reading of it.
Happiest Season (2020)
Keeps the comedy register of Robot & Frank but asks for a colder reading of it.
SNL50: The Homecoming Concert (2025)
Keeps the comedy register of Happiest Season but asks for a colder reading of it.
Never Change! (2026)
Keeps the comedy register of SNL50: The Homecoming Concert but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Andrew Fleming
Director
1 film together
Notably Dick
Nancy Meyers
Director
1 film together
Notably What Women Want
Mark Waters
Director
1 film together
Notably Mean Girls
Jake Schreier
Director
1 film together
Notably Robot & Frank
Andy Fickman
Director
1 film together
Notably Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2
Clea DuVall
Director
1 film together
Notably Happiest Season
Beth McCarthy-Miller
Director
1 film together
Notably SNL50: The Homecoming Concert
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Mark Waters
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mean GirlsClea DuVall
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Happiest SeasonJake Schreier
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Robot & FrankNancy 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 WantBeth McCarthy-Miller
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SNL50: The Homecoming ConcertAndrew Fleming
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
DickAndy Fickman
Director
1 film together · 5.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2Six 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
Mean Girls
as Cady's Mom
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Woman on Top
as Claudia Hunter
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Mean Girls
as Cady's Mom
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Robot & Frank
as Shoplady
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Mean Girls
as Cady's Mom
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. Ana Gasteyer 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.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
10 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
Mean Girls
as Cady's Mom
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Mean Girls
as Cady's Mom
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Woman on Top
as Claudia Hunter
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Mean Girls
as Cady's Mom
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Mean Girls
as Cady's Mom
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2
as Mrs. Gundermutt
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Woman on Top
as Claudia Hunter
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Mean Girls
as Cady's Mom
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
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Reference
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