Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#6168
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Cynthia Nixon represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 38 years in, and Cynthia is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Cynthia Nixon appears in 16 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Cynthia. Amadeus is the clearest case: a film rated 8.0 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, quiet performance, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for documentary, crime, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Marc Webb, Pamela Romanowsky, Michael Patrick King and others, Cynthia Nixon 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.
Amadeus (1984) as Lorl · Little Manhattan (2005) as Leslie · Addams Family Values (1993) as Heather
Career snapshot
Ranked #6168 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
16
1984–2022
Career length
38 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.0
Amadeus
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.0
Amadeus
Most frequent director
Michael Patrick King
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Michael Patrick King
Most common genre
Drama
12 titles
Average runtime
1h 47m
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
6.6
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
1980s
8.0 average MV
The 1980s are where the work and the material meet. Amadeus — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1980s
8.0
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1980s
8.0
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1980s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Amadeus.
Most productive era
2010s
7 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 | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 8.01 film | 6.72 films | 6.23 films | 5.56 films | — |
| Thriller | — | 6.61 film | — | 5.31 film | — |
| Comedy | — | 7.01 film | 6.63 films | 6.01 film | — |
| Crime | — | 6.61 film | — | 4.82 films | — |
| Romance | — | — | 6.92 films | 5.72 films | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
1984Amadeus
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Lorl. 8.0 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
2022And Just Like That... The Documentary
The current state of the argument, as Self.
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.
16 of 16 films
as Lorl
Directed by Miloš Forman
as Leslie
Directed by Mark Levin
as Heather
Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld
as Emily Dickinson
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.
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The defining work
#1
Lorl
Amadeus (1984)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Lorl gives Cynthia Nixon a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Leslie
Little Manhattan (2005)
Performance score7.3
Little Manhattan asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Leslie is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Self
And Just Like That... The Documentary (2022)
Performance score7.1
And Just Like That... The Documentary 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 movie#4
Heather
Addams Family Values (1993)
Performance score6.9
Addams Family Values asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Heather 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 Lorl
Start here. Amadeus is the clearest statement of what Cynthia Nixon does — accessible, 160 minutes, and rated 8.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Cynthia 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.
Addams Family Values (1993)
A deliberate change of key after Amadeus — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Little Manhattan (2005)
Keeps the comedy register of Addams Family Values but asks for a colder reading of it.
A Quiet Passion (2016)
A deliberate change of key after Little Manhattan — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
And Just Like That... The Documentary (2022)
Same director as A Quiet Passion, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Michael Patrick King
Director
2 films together
Notably Sex and the City
Miloš Forman
Director
1 film together
Notably Amadeus
Alan J. Pakula
Director
1 film together
Notably The Pelican Brief
Barry Sonnenfeld
Director
1 film together
Notably Addams Family Values
Jerry Zaks
Director
1 film together
Notably Marvin's Room
Mark Levin
Director
1 film together
Notably Little Manhattan
Pamela Romanowsky
Director
1 film together
Notably The Adderall Diaries
Marc Webb
Director
1 film together
Notably The Only Living Boy in New York
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Michael Patrick King
Director
2 films together · 6.3 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Sex and the CityMiloš Forman
Director
1 film together · 8.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
AmadeusMark Levin
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Little ManhattanBarry Sonnenfeld
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Addams Family ValuesJerry Zaks
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Marvin's RoomAlan J. Pakula
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 Pelican BriefMarc Webb
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 Only Living Boy in New YorkPamela Romanowsky
Director
1 film together · 5.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Adderall DiariesSix 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
Amadeus
as Lorl
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Amadeus
as Lorl
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Amadeus
as Lorl
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Addams Family Values
as Heather
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Amadeus
as Lorl
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. Cynthia Nixon 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
38 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
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
Amadeus
as Lorl
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Pelican Brief
as Alice Stark
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Adderall Diaries
as Jen Davis
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Pelican Brief
as Alice Stark
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Amadeus
as Lorl
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Amadeus
as Lorl
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Sex and the City 2
as Miranda Hobbes
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Sex and the City
as Miranda Hobbes
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Reference
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