Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#7994
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Jessica Hynes represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 32 years in, and Jessica is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Jessica Hynes appears in 11 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Jessica. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is the clearest case: a film rated 7.9 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 comedy, horror, fantasy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Barbara Wiltshire, Phil Traill, David Yates and others, Jessica Hynes 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.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007) as Mafalda Hopkirk (voice) · Shaun of the Dead (2004) as Yvonne · Paddington in Peru (2024) as Miss Kitts
Career snapshot
Ranked #7994 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
11
1993–2025
Career length
32 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.9
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Average Nutevio score
6.1
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.7
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Most frequent director
Barbara Wiltshire
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Barbara Wiltshire
Most common genre
Comedy
8 titles
Average runtime
1h 44m
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
7.1 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Son of Rambow, Shaun of the Dead — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
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
2000s
7.0
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. Swing Kids.
Most productive era
2000s
4 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 | 6.51 film | — | 3.22 films | — |
| Thriller | — | — | 0.01 film | — |
| Comedy | — | 6.83 films | 6.42 films | 6.53 films |
| Romance | — | 6.21 film | 6.42 films | — |
| Horror | — | 7.61 film | 0.01 film | 6.41 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1993Swing Kids
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Helga.
Career peak
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
2007Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
7.9 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
The current state of the argument, as Shaw.
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 Mafalda Hopkirk (voice)
Directed by David Yates
as Mary Proudfoot
Directed by Garth Jennings
as Miss Kitts
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
Mafalda Hopkirk (voice)
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)
Performance score7.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Mafalda Hopkirk (voice) gives Jessica Hynes a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Yvonne
Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Performance score7.7
Shaun of the Dead asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Yvonne is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Mary Proudfoot
Son of Rambow (2007)
Performance score7.1
Son of Rambow asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mary Proudfoot is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Miss Kitts
Paddington in Peru (2024)
Performance score6.7
Paddington in Peru asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Miss Kitts 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 Mafalda Hopkirk (voice)
Start here. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is the clearest statement of what Jessica Hynes does — accessible, 138 minutes, and rated 7.9 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Jessica 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.
Shaun of the Dead (2004)
A deliberate change of key after Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Son of Rambow (2007)
Keeps the comedy register of Shaun of the Dead but asks for a colder reading of it.
Paddington in Peru (2024)
Keeps the comedy register of Son of Rambow but asks for a colder reading of it.
Death of a Unicorn (2025)
Same director as Paddington in Peru, 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.
Thomas Carter
Director
1 film together
Notably Swing Kids
Edgar Wright
Director
1 film together
Notably Shaun of the Dead
Garth Jennings
Director
1 film together
Notably Son of Rambow
David Yates
Director
1 film together
Notably Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Phil Traill
Director
1 film together
Notably Chalet Girl
Barbara Wiltshire
Director
1 film together
Notably Miranda: My Such Fun Celebration
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
David Yates
Director
1 film together · 7.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Harry Potter and the Order of the PhoenixEdgar Wright
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Shaun of the DeadGarth Jennings
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Son of RambowThomas Carter
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Swing KidsPhil Traill
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Chalet GirlBarbara Wiltshire
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Miranda: My Such Fun CelebrationSix 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
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
as Mafalda Hopkirk (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
Swing Kids
as Helga
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
as Mafalda Hopkirk (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
as Mafalda Hopkirk (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
as Mafalda Hopkirk (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. Jessica Hynes 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
32 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
8 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
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
as Mafalda Hopkirk (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Shaun of the Dead
as Yvonne
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Swing Kids
as Helga
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
as Mafalda Hopkirk (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
as Mafalda Hopkirk (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
as Mafalda Hopkirk (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Bridget Jones's Baby
as Magda
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
as Mafalda Hopkirk (voice)
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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