Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3000
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Jennifer Saunders represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 29 years in, and Jennifer is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Jennifer Saunders appears in 13 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Jennifer. Coraline 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 fantasy, adventure, family. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Ben Gregor, Tina Gharavi, Kenneth Branagh and others, Jennifer Saunders 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.
Coraline (2009) as Miss April Spink / Other Spink (voice) · Sing 2 (2021) as Nana (voice) · Mamma Mia! Here We Go Yet Again (2019) as Meryl Streep / Cher
Career snapshot
Ranked #3000 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
13
1997–2026
Career length
29 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.1
Coraline
Average Nutevio score
6.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.9
Coraline
Most frequent director
Garth Jennings
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Garth Jennings
Most common genre
Comedy
9 titles
Average runtime
1h 33m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.0
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
2000s
7.8 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Coraline, Shrek 2 — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
7.8
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
7.6
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. Spice World.
Most productive era
2020s
6 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 | 5.51 film | — | — | 6.01 film |
| Action | — | — | — | 6.71 film |
| Thriller | — | — | — | 6.41 film |
| Comedy | 5.51 film | 7.51 film | 6.64 films | 6.83 films |
| Crime | — | — | — | 6.41 film |
| Romance | — | 7.51 film | — | 6.01 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1997Spice World
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Fashionable Woman.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2009Coraline
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
2026Virginia Woolf's Night & Day
The current state of the argument, as Bess Hilbery.
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.
13 of 13 films
as Miss April Spink / Other Spink (voice)
Directed by Henry Selick
as Nana (voice)
Directed by Garth Jennings
as Fairy Godmother (voice)
Directed by Andrew Adamson
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
Miss April Spink / Other Spink (voice)
Coraline (2009)
Performance score8.3
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Miss April Spink / Other Spink (voice) gives Jennifer Saunders a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Meryl Streep / Cher
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Yet Again (2019)
Performance score7.9
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Yet Again asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Meryl Streep / Cher is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Nana (voice)
Sing 2 (2021)
Performance score7.6
Sing 2 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Nana (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Fairy Godmother (voice)
Shrek 2 (2004)
Performance score7.3
Shrek 2 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Fairy Godmother (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 Miss April Spink / Other Spink (voice)
Start here. Coraline is the clearest statement of what Jennifer Saunders 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 Jennifer 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.
Shrek 2 (2004)
Keeps the fantasy register of Coraline but asks for a colder reading of it.
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Yet Again (2019)
Keeps the comedy register of Shrek 2 but asks for a colder reading of it.
Sing 2 (2021)
Keeps the comedy register of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Yet Again but asks for a colder reading of it.
200% Wolf (2024)
Keeps the comedy register of Sing 2 but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Garth Jennings
Director
2 films together
Notably Sing 2
Bob Spiers
Director
1 film together
Notably Spice World
Andrew Adamson
Director
1 film together
Notably Shrek 2
Henry Selick
Director
1 film together
Notably Coraline
Kyle Balda
Director
1 film together
Notably Minions
Mandie Fletcher
Director
1 film together
Notably Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie
Ed Bye
Director
1 film together
Notably Mamma Mia! Here We Go Yet Again
Kenneth Branagh
Director
1 film together
Notably Death on the Nile
Tina Gharavi
Director
1 film together
Notably Virginia Woolf's Night & Day
Ben Gregor
Director
1 film together
Notably The Magic Faraway Tree
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Garth Jennings
Director
2 films together · 7.4 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Sing 2Henry Selick
Director
1 film together · 8.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
CoralineEd Bye
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Yet AgainAndrew Adamson
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Shrek 2Kenneth Branagh
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Death on the NileKyle Balda
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
MinionsBen Gregor
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 Magic Faraway TreeTina Gharavi
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Virginia Woolf's Night & DayBob Spiers
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Spice WorldMandie Fletcher
Director
1 film together · 5.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Absolutely Fabulous: The MovieSix 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
Coraline
as Miss April Spink / Other Spink (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
Coraline
as Miss April Spink / Other Spink (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
Coraline
as Miss April Spink / Other Spink (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Spice World
as Fashionable Woman
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Coraline
as Miss April Spink / Other Spink (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. Jennifer Saunders 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
29 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
9 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
Coraline
as Miss April Spink / Other Spink (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Death on the Nile
as Marie Van Schuyler
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Coraline
as Miss April Spink / Other Spink (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Death on the Nile
as Marie Van Schuyler
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Coraline
as Miss April Spink / Other Spink (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
200% Wolf
as Max (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Shrek 2
as Fairy Godmother (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Spice World
as Fashionable Woman
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Morgan Freeman
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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