Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#2989
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Ellen DeGeneres represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 28 years in, and Ellen is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Ellen DeGeneres appears in 11 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Ellen. Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love is the clearest case: a film rated 8.3 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 science fiction, comedy, adventure. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Paul Miller, Paul Dugdale, Andrew Stanton and others, Ellen DeGeneres 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.
Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love (2023) as Self - Guest · Finding Nemo (2003) as Dory (voice) · Adele One Night Only (2021) as Self
Career snapshot
Ranked #2989 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
11
1998–2026
Career length
28 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.3
Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love
Average Nutevio score
6.3
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.3
Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love
Most frequent director
Andrew Stanton
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Andrew Stanton
Most common genre
Documentary
6 titles
Average runtime
2h 5m
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
8.1 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Finding Nemo — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
8.1
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
7.8
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. EDtv, Doctor Dolittle.
Most productive era
2020s
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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Comedy | 6.02 films | — | — | 7.92 films |
| Crime | — | — | — | 5.11 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1998Doctor Dolittle
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Prologue Dog (voice).
Career peak
2003Finding Nemo
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
2023Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love
8.3 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
2026Jared Leto: Hollywood's Dark Secret
The current state of the argument, as Self (archive footage).
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.
11 of 11 films
as Dory (voice)
Directed by Andrew Stanton
as Self - Guest
Directed by Paul Miller
as Self
Directed by Paul Dugdale
as Dory (voice)
Directed by Andrew Stanton
as Self (archive footage) (uncredited)
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
Dory (voice)
Finding Nemo (2003)
Performance score8.3
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Dory (voice) gives Ellen DeGeneres a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Self - Guest
Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love (2023)
Performance score8.0
Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self - Guest is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Self
Adele One Night Only (2021)
Performance score7.6
Adele One Night Only 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
Dory (voice)
Finding Dory (2016)
Performance score7.6
Finding Dory asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Dory (voice) 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 Dory (voice)
Start here. Finding Nemo is the clearest statement of what Ellen DeGeneres does — accessible, 100 minutes, and rated 8.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Ellen 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.
Finding Dory (2016)
Same director as Finding Nemo, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Adele One Night Only (2021)
A deliberate change of key after Finding Dory — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love (2023)
Keeps the documentary register of Adele One Night Only but asks for a colder reading of it.
Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie (2026)
Keeps the comedy register of Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Andrew Stanton
Director
2 films together
Notably Finding Nemo
Betty Thomas
Director
1 film together
Notably Doctor Dolittle
Ron Howard
Director
1 film together
Notably EDtv
Paul Dugdale
Director
1 film together
Notably Adele One Night Only
Paul Miller
Director
1 film together
Notably Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Andrew Stanton
Director
2 films together · 7.5 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Finding NemoPaul Miller
Director
1 film together · 8.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + LovePaul Dugdale
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Adele One Night OnlyRon Howard
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
EDtvBetty Thomas
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Doctor DolittleSix 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
Finding Nemo
as Dory (voice)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Finding Nemo
as Dory (voice)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love
as Self - Guest
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
You Cannot Kill David Arquette
as Self (archive footage) (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Finding Nemo
as Dory (voice)
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. Ellen DeGeneres 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
28 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.
Documentary Legend
Awarded
6 catalogue titles in documentary, 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
Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love
as Self - Guest
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love
as Self - Guest
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Finding Dory
as Dory (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Doctor Dolittle
as Prologue Dog (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Finding Nemo
as Dory (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Finding Dory
as Dory (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Finding Dory
as Dory (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Finding Nemo
as Dory (voice)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Tom Hanks
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Bonnie Hunt
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Tim Allen
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Joan Cusack
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Greta Lee
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Conan O'Brien
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Have your say
Community
Which Ellen DeGeneres performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
Join the conversation
Reference
Continue exploring
Trending performers
Directors they work with
Collections to read next
