Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#22709
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Lily Cole 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.
Lily Cole appears in 6 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Lily. Star Wars: The Last Jedi is the clearest case: a film rated 7.0 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 crime, thriller, action. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Rian Johnson, Mandie Fletcher, Terry Gilliam and others, Lily Cole 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.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) as Party Girl Lovey · The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009) as Valentina · The Zero Theorem (2013) as Woman in Street Commercial
Career snapshot
Ranked #22709 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
6
2007–2018
Career length
11 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.0
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Average Nutevio score
6.0
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
6.8
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Most frequent director
Terry Gilliam
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Terry Gilliam
Most common genre
Science Fiction
2 titles
Average runtime
1h 55m
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
6.2
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
6.2 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, St Trinian's — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.2
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.2
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. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, St Trinian's.
Most productive era
2010s
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 | 2000s | 2010s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.11 film |
| Action | — | 7.01 film |
| Thriller | — | 5.11 film |
| Comedy | 5.91 film | 5.31 film |
| Crime | — | 5.11 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2007St Trinian's
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Polly.
Career peak
2009The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
7.0 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
2018London Fields
The current state of the argument, as Trish Shirt.
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.
6 of 6 films
as Party Girl Lovey
Directed by Rian Johnson
as Valentina
Directed by Terry Gilliam
as Trish Shirt
Directed by Unknown
as Woman in Street Commercial
Directed by Terry Gilliam
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
Party Girl Lovey
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)
Performance score6.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Party Girl Lovey gives Lily Cole a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Valentina
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)
Performance score6.9
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Valentina is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Trish Shirt
London Fields (2018)
Performance score6.5
London Fields asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Trish Shirt is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Lily Cole
Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie (2016)
Performance score6.5
Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Lily Cole 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 Party Girl Lovey
Start here. Star Wars: The Last Jedi is the clearest statement of what Lily Cole does — accessible, 152 minutes, and rated 7.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Lily 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 Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)
Keeps the adventure register of Star Wars: The Last Jedi but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Zero Theorem (2013)
Same director as The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie (2016)
A deliberate change of key after The Zero Theorem — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
London Fields (2018)
A deliberate change of key after Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Terry Gilliam
Director
2 films together
Notably The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Oliver Parker
Director
1 film together
Notably St Trinian's
Mandie Fletcher
Director
1 film together
Notably Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie
Rian Johnson
Director
1 film together
Notably Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Terry Gilliam
Director
2 films together · 6.3 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The Imaginarium of Doctor ParnassusRian Johnson
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Star Wars: The Last JediOliver Parker
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
St Trinian'sMandie 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
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
as Party Girl Lovey
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 Zero Theorem
as Woman in Street Commercial
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
as Party Girl Lovey
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
as Party Girl Lovey
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
as Party Girl Lovey
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. Lily Cole 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.
Modern Classic Performer
Awarded
Defining performances delivered inside the last twenty-five years, in films already being taught rather than merely remembered.
Science Fiction Legend
Awarded
2 catalogue titles in science fiction, 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 Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
as Valentina
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
as Party Girl Lovey
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Zero Theorem
as Woman in Street Commercial
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
as Valentina
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
as Party Girl Lovey
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
as Party Girl Lovey
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Zero Theorem
as Woman in Street Commercial
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
as Party Girl Lovey
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Jamie Harris
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Elliot Page
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Christian Bale
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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