Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#6233
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Joanna Gleason represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 39 years in, and Joanna is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Joanna Gleason appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Joanna. Hannah and Her Sisters is the clearest case: a film rated 7.5 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, versatility, emotional range. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for documentary, comedy, romance. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Jon Turteltaub, Michael Patrick King, Adam Shankman and others, Joanna Gleason 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.
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) as Carol · My Sassy Girl (2008) as Kitty / Aunt Sally · Mr. Holland's Opus (1995) as Gertrude Lang as an adult
Career snapshot
Ranked #6233 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
1986–2025
Career length
39 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.5
Hannah and Her Sisters
Average Nutevio score
5.1
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.5
Hannah and Her Sisters
Most frequent director
Jon Turteltaub
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Jon Turteltaub
Most common genre
Comedy
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 46m
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
6.4
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
1990s
6.8 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Mr. Holland's Opus — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
6.8
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
7.0
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1980s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Hannah and Her Sisters, Heartburn.
Most productive era
2000s
3 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 | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.82 films | 6.81 film | 6.61 film | — | — |
| Comedy | 6.82 films | — | 6.43 films | 6.41 film | — |
| Romance | 6.01 film | — | 6.43 films | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Carol. 7.5 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
The current state of the argument, as Self (voice).
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.
9 of 9 films
as Kitty / Aunt Sally
Directed by Unknown
as Gertrude Lang as an adult
Directed by Stephen Herek
as Therapist
Directed by Michael Patrick King
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
Carol
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
Performance score7.3
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Carol gives Joanna Gleason a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Kitty / Aunt Sally
My Sassy Girl (2008)
Performance score6.7
My Sassy Girl asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Kitty / Aunt Sally is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Gertrude Lang as an adult
Mr. Holland's Opus (1995)
Performance score6.7
Mr. Holland's Opus asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Gertrude Lang as an adult is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Therapist
Sex and the City (2008)
Performance score6.6
Sex and the City asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Therapist 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 Carol
Start here. Hannah and Her Sisters is the clearest statement of what Joanna Gleason does — accessible, 107 minutes, and rated 7.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Joanna 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.
Mr. Holland's Opus (1995)
Keeps the drama register of Hannah and Her Sisters but asks for a colder reading of it.
My Sassy Girl (2008)
A deliberate change of key after Mr. Holland's Opus — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Sex and the City (2008)
Keeps the romance register of My Sassy Girl but asks for a colder reading of it.
This Ordinary Thing (2025)
A deliberate change of key after Sex and the City — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Mike Nichols
Director
1 film together
Notably Heartburn
Woody Allen
Director
1 film together
Notably Hannah and Her Sisters
Stephen Herek
Director
1 film together
Notably Mr. Holland's Opus
Adam Shankman
Director
1 film together
Notably The Wedding Planner
Michael Patrick King
Director
1 film together
Notably Sex and the City
Jon Turteltaub
Director
1 film together
Notably Last Vegas
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Woody Allen
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hannah and Her SistersStephen Herek
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mr. Holland's OpusMichael Patrick King
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Sex and the CityJon Turteltaub
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Last VegasMike Nichols
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
HeartburnAdam Shankman
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Wedding PlannerSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Recognition
2 wins · 1 nomination
1 win · latest 1977
as Actor
1 win · latest 1988
as Actor
No wins yet · 1 nomination
as Actor
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
Hannah and Her Sisters
as Carol
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Mr. Holland's Opus
as Gertrude Lang as an adult
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Hannah and Her Sisters
as Carol
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Hannah and Her Sisters
as Carol
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Hannah and Her Sisters
as Carol
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. Joanna Gleason 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
39 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
6 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
Hannah and Her Sisters
as Carol
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Hannah and Her Sisters
as Carol
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Mr. Holland's Opus
as Gertrude Lang as an adult
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Mr. Holland's Opus
as Gertrude Lang as an adult
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Hannah and Her Sisters
as Carol
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
My Sassy Girl
as Kitty / Aunt Sally
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Heartburn
as Diana
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Sex and the City
as Therapist
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Mark Ruffalo
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Have your say
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Reference
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