Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#1128
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Kate Walsh 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.
Kate Walsh appears in 15 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Kate. The Perks of Being a Wallflower is the clearest case: a film rated 7.8 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 horror, thriller, action. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Mark Williams, Mike Doyle, Andrew Fleming and others, Kate Walsh 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.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012) as Mother · The Family Man (2000) as Jeannie · 1408 (2007) as Mike Enslin's Ex-wife (uncredited)
Career snapshot
Ranked #1128 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
15
2000–2024
Career length
24 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.8
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.8
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Most frequent director
Brett Ratner
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Brett Ratner
Most common genre
Comedy
8 titles
Average runtime
1h 39m
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
2020s
6.3 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Sting, Honest Thief — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
6.3
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
6.3
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2000s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. 1408, Kicking & Screaming, Bewitched.
Most productive era
2010s
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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.52 films | 6.65 films | — |
| Action | 6.21 film | 5.91 film | 6.51 film |
| Thriller | — | 6.21 film | 6.32 films |
| Comedy | 6.05 films | 6.33 films | — |
| Crime | 6.21 film | — | 6.51 film |
| Romance | 5.92 films | 6.32 films | — |
| Horror | 6.71 film | 5.91 film | 6.21 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2000The Family Man
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Jeannie.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2012The Perks of Being a Wallflower
7.8 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
2024Sting
The current state of the argument, as Sandy.
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.
15 of 15 films
as Annie Wilkins
Directed by Mark Williams
as Kathleen Morgan
Directed by Courteney Cox
as Jeannie
Directed by Brett Ratner
as Mike Enslin's Ex-wife (uncredited)
Directed by Mikael Håfström
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
Mother
The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Mother gives Kate Walsh a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Annie Wilkins
Honest Thief (2020)
Performance score7.0
Honest Thief asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Annie Wilkins is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Kathleen Morgan
Just Before I Go (2015)
Performance score6.9
Just Before I Go asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Kathleen Morgan is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Jeannie
The Family Man (2000)
Performance score6.7
The Family Man asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Jeannie 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 Mother
Start here. The Perks of Being a Wallflower is the clearest statement of what Kate Walsh does — accessible, 103 minutes, and rated 7.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Kate 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 Family Man (2000)
Keeps the drama register of The Perks of Being a Wallflower but asks for a colder reading of it.
1408 (2007)
A deliberate change of key after The Family Man — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Just Before I Go (2015)
A deliberate change of key after 1408 — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Honest Thief (2020)
A deliberate change of key after Just Before I Go — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Brett Ratner
Director
2 films together
Notably The Family Man
Adam McKay
Director
1 film together
Notably Wake Up, Ron Burgundy: The Lost Movie
Nora Ephron
Director
1 film together
Notably Bewitched
Mikael Håfström
Director
1 film together
Notably 1408
Scott Stewart
Director
1 film together
Notably Legion
Stephen Chbosky
Director
1 film together
Notably The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Courteney Cox
Director
1 film together
Notably Just Before I Go
Peter Landesman
Director
1 film together
Notably Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House
Andrew Fleming
Director
1 film together
Notably Ideal Home
Mike Doyle
Director
1 film together
Notably Almost Love
Mark Williams
Director
1 film together
Notably Honest Thief
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Brett Ratner
Director
2 films together · 6.5 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The Family ManStephen Chbosky
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Perks of Being a WallflowerMikael Håfström
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
1408Mark Williams
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Honest ThiefAndrew Fleming
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Ideal HomeCourteney Cox
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Just Before I GoPeter Landesman
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White HouseMike Doyle
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Almost LoveAdam McKay
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Wake Up, Ron Burgundy: The Lost MovieScott Stewart
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
LegionNora Ephron
Director
1 film together · 5.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BewitchedSix 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
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
as Mother
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 Family Man
as Jeannie
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
as Mother
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Bewitched
as Sexy Waitress
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
as Mother
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. Kate Walsh 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
24 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
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
as Mother
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
1408
as Mike Enslin's Ex-wife (uncredited)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Family Man
as Jeannie
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
1408
as Mike Enslin's Ex-wife (uncredited)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
as Mother
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
After the Sunset
as Sheila
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Family Man
as Jeannie
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
3022
as Jackie Miller
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: drama and fantasy
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: family and comedy
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: family and comedy
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Have your say
Community
Which Kate Walsh performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
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Reference
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