Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#2100
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Emily Piggford 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.
Emily Piggford appears in 8 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Emily. Supergirl is the clearest case: a film rated 8.1 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 action, adventure, sci-fi. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Craig Gillespie, Jay Roach, Noah Baumbach and others, Emily Piggford 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.
Supergirl (2026) as Delilah Knoll · Supergirl (2026) as Delilah Knoll · The King Tide (2024) as Emily
Career snapshot
Ranked #2100 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
8
2017–2026
Career length
9 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.1
Supergirl
Average Nutevio score
5.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
Supergirl
Most frequent director
Craig Gillespie
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Craig Gillespie
Most common genre
Drama
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 38m
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
6.1
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
5.8 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Supergirl, Supergirl, The Roses — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
5.8
Across 7 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
5.7
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2010s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Flatliners.
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 | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 5.71 film | 4.33 films |
| Action | — | 7.52 films |
| Thriller | 5.71 film | 6.52 films |
| Comedy | — | 6.52 films |
| Sci-Fi | — | 8.11 film |
| Crime | — | 6.01 film |
| Romance | — | 6.71 film |
| Horror | 5.71 film | 6.52 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2017Flatliners
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Neurology Resident #1.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2026Supergirl
8.1 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
2026Supergirl
The current state of the argument, as Delilah Knoll.
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.
8 of 8 films
as Delilah Knoll
Directed by Craig Gillespie
as Delilah Knoll
Directed by Craig Gillespie
as Emily
Directed by Unknown
as Captain Jenny
Directed by Noah Baumbach
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Showing 14 of 14 titles · 14 total credits · active 2012–2026
Supergirl
2026 · Delilah Knoll
The Roses
2025 · Lily
Jay Kelly
2025 · Captain Jenny
Too Much
2025 · TV · Alaia Remen
The King Tide
2024 · Emily
Davey & Jonesie's Locker
2024 · TV · Cheryl
See for Me
2022 · Deputy Brooks
The Midnight Club
2022 · TV · Kara
Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol
2021 · TV · Trish
Liminal
2020 · Amy
Flatliners
2017 · Neurology Resident #1
The Girlfriend Experience
2016 · TV · Sandra Fuchs
Hemlock Grove
2013 · TV · Ashley Valentine
Beauty and the Beast
2012 · TV · Lab Tech
The defining work
#1
Delilah Knoll
Supergirl (2026)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Delilah Knoll gives Emily Piggford a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Delilah Knoll
Supergirl (2026)
Performance score6.9
Supergirl asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Delilah Knoll is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Emily
The King Tide (2024)
Performance score6.8
The King Tide asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Emily is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Lily
The Roses (2025)
Performance score6.6
The Roses asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Lily 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 Delilah Knoll
Start here. Supergirl is the clearest statement of what Emily Piggford does — accessible, 124 minutes, and rated 8.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Emily 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 King Tide (2024)
A deliberate change of key after Supergirl — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Roses (2025)
A deliberate change of key after The King Tide — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Jay Kelly (2025)
Keeps the comedy register of The Roses but asks for a colder reading of it.
Supergirl (2026)
A deliberate change of key after Jay Kelly — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Craig Gillespie
Director
2 films together
Notably Supergirl
Niels Arden Oplev
Director
1 film together
Notably Flatliners
Dan Abramovici
Director
1 film together
Notably Liminal
Noah Baumbach
Director
1 film together
Notably Jay Kelly
Jay Roach
Director
1 film together
Notably The Roses
David Krumholtz
Actor
1 film together
Notably Supergirl
Milly Alcock
Actor
1 film together
Notably Supergirl
Eve Ridley
Actor
1 film together
Notably Supergirl
Matthias Schoenaerts
Actor
1 film together
Notably Supergirl
Jason Momoa
Actor
1 film together
Notably Supergirl
Emily Beecham
Actor
1 film together
Notably Supergirl
David Corenswet
Actor
1 film together
Notably Supergirl
Kadiff Kirwan
Actor
1 film together
Notably Supergirl
Thalissa Teixeira
Actor
1 film together
Notably Supergirl
Ferdinand Kingsley
Actor
1 film together
Notably Supergirl
Diarmaid Murtagh
Actor
1 film together
Notably Supergirl
Clara Rosager
Actor
1 film together
Notably Supergirl
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Craig Gillespie
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
SupergirlJay Roach
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The RosesNoah Baumbach
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Jay KellyNiels Arden Oplev
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
FlatlinersDan Abramovici
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
LiminalSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Performer
Emily Piggford
Where this journey starts
Director
Craig Gillespie
2 collaborations, averaging 7.5
Film
Supergirl
Their highest-rated film together (2026)
Performer
David Krumholtz
Shares the frame in Supergirl
Film
Oppenheimer
Where David goes next, and where you can too
Performer
Matt Damon
Three steps from where you began
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
Supergirl
as Delilah Knoll
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 Roses
as Lily
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Supergirl
as Delilah Knoll
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Jay Kelly
as Captain Jenny
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Supergirl
as Delilah Knoll
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. Emily Piggford has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
| Nutevio Performer Score | 7.3 | 8.9 |
|---|---|---|
| Career ranking | #650 of 681 | #2 of 681 |
| Awards on file | Unknown | 4 recorded |
| Oscar wins | Unknown | 2 |
| Oscar nominations | Unknown | 6 |
| Average Nutevio score | 8.1 | 9.3 |
| Genres | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi | Sci-Fi, Adventure, Drama, Thriller |
| Directors | Craig Gillespie | Christopher Nolan |
| Performance DNA | Physical performance, Action, Screen presence | Transformation, Screen presence, Rewatchability |
| Career timeline | 2026–2026 | 2006–2014 |
| Most iconic role | Delilah Knoll — Supergirl | Professor Brand — Interstellar |
| Most rewatchable film | Supergirl | The Dark Knight |
| Filmography | 1 catalogue film | 4 catalogue films |
Films together
Nothing in common in the library yet.
Shared directors
Nothing in common in the library yet.
Shared collections
Action Movies, Adventure Movies, Sci-Fi Movies
Michael Caine edges ahead here — a higher floor across a comparable body of work.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
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
4 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
Supergirl
as Delilah Knoll
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Supergirl
as Delilah Knoll
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Roses
as Lily
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The King Tide
as Emily
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Supergirl
as Delilah Knoll
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Supergirl
as Delilah Knoll
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Roses
as Lily
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Supergirl
as Delilah Knoll
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
Across the library
Every Nutevio collection this name turns up in, and how high they rank there.
Collection footprint
Appears in 3 Nutevio collections
Keep reading
From the magazine
If you like this performer
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: sci-fi and adventure
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
David Krumholtz
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Elliot Page
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Have your say
Community
Which Emily Piggford 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
