Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3154
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Elizabeth Reaser represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 25 years in, and Elizabeth is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Elizabeth Reaser appears in 16 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Elizabeth. Act One is the clearest case: a film rated 10.0 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 thriller, comedy, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Sophia Takal, David Slade, Alejandro Brugués and others, Elizabeth Reaser 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.
Act One (2026) as Julie · The Believer (2001) as Miriam · Embattled (2020) as Susan
Career snapshot
Ranked #3154 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
16
2001–2026
Career length
25 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
10.0
Act One
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
10.0
Act One
Most frequent director
David Slade
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With David Slade
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
6.9
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
2020s
7.1 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Act One, The Uninvited, Dark Harvest — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
7.1
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
7.1
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. The Twilight Saga: New Moon, Twilight, The Family Stone.
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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.55 films | 6.35 films | 6.22 films |
| Action | — | — | 6.71 film |
| Thriller | 6.61 film | — | 8.02 films |
| Comedy | 6.31 film | 6.22 films | 5.71 film |
| Romance | 6.33 films | 6.45 films | — |
| Horror | — | 5.81 film | 6.01 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2001The Believer
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Miriam.
First Nutevio masterpiece · Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2026Act One
The first film here to clear 9.0 on our scale — a threshold fewer than one film in ten reaches. 10.0 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. The current state of the argument, as Julie.
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 Julie
Directed by Sophia Takal
as Athena
Directed by Marc Forster
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
Julie
Act One (2026)
Performance score9.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Julie gives Elizabeth Reaser a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Susan
Embattled (2020)
Performance score7.1
Embattled 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
Charlotte Howe
The Art of Getting By (2011)
Performance score6.8
The Art of Getting By asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Charlotte Howe is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Athena
Stay (2005)
Performance score6.8
Stay asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Athena 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 Julie
Start here. Act One is the clearest statement of what Elizabeth Reaser does — accessible, 104 minutes, and rated 10.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Elizabeth 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 Believer (2001)
A deliberate change of key after Act One — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Stay (2005)
Keeps the drama register of The Believer but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Art of Getting By (2011)
Keeps the drama register of Stay but asks for a colder reading of it.
Embattled (2020)
Same director as The Art of Getting By, 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.
Bill Condon
Director
2 films together
Notably The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2
David Slade
Director
2 films together
Notably The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
Henry Bean
Director
1 film together
Notably The Believer
Marc Forster
Director
1 film together
Notably Stay
Thomas Bezucha
Director
1 film together
Notably The Family Stone
Catherine Hardwicke
Director
1 film together
Notably Twilight
Chris Weitz
Director
1 film together
Notably The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Jason Reitman
Director
1 film together
Notably Young Adult
Josh Radnor
Director
1 film together
Notably Liberal Arts
Alejandro Brugués
Director
1 film together
Notably Nightmare Cinema
Sophia Takal
Director
1 film together
Notably Act One
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Bill Condon
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
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2David Slade
Director
2 films together · 6.1 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The Twilight Saga: EclipseSophia Takal
Director
1 film together · 10.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Act OneHenry Bean
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The BelieverMarc Forster
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
StayJosh Radnor
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Liberal ArtsCatherine Hardwicke
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
TwilightThomas Bezucha
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 Family StoneChris Weitz
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Twilight Saga: New MoonAlejandro Brugués
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Nightmare CinemaJason Reitman
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Young AdultSix 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
Act One
as Julie
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
The Art of Getting By
as Charlotte Howe
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Act One
as Julie
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Act One
as Julie
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Act One
as Julie
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. Elizabeth Reaser 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
25 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
Act One
as Julie
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Act One
as Julie
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2
as Esme Cullen
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Stay
as Athena
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Act One
as Julie
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Embattled
as Susan
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Liberal Arts
as Ana
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
as Esme Cullen
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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