Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#13296
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Margaret Travolta represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 31 years in, and Margaret is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Margaret Travolta appears in 18 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Margaret. Catch Me If You Can is the clearest case: a film rated 8.2 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 adventure, family, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with John Travolta, Kevin Lima, Steve Pink and others, Margaret Travolta 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.
Catch Me If You Can (2002) as Ms. Davenport · High Fidelity (2000) as Rob's Mom · Traffic (2000) as Economist
Career snapshot
Ranked #13296 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
18
1995–2026
Career length
31 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.2
Catch Me If You Can
Average Nutevio score
6.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.0
Catch Me If You Can
Most frequent director
Nora Ephron
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Nora Ephron
Most common genre
Comedy
10 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
6.5
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
6.4 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Old Dogs, Ocean's Thirteen, Enchanted — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.4
Across 13 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.4
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. Mercury Rising, Chain Reaction, Michael.
Most productive era
2000s
13 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 | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.02 films | 7.53 films | 6.41 film |
| Action | 6.02 films | 6.24 films | — |
| Thriller | 6.02 films | 6.74 films | — |
| Comedy | 6.32 films | 6.18 films | — |
| Crime | 6.31 film | 6.58 films | — |
| Romance | 7.01 film | 7.02 films | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Admitting Nurse.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
8.2 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
2026Propeller One-Way Night Coach
The current state of the argument, as Barbara.
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.
18 of 18 films
as Ms. Davenport
Directed by Steven Spielberg
as Rob's Mom
Directed by Stephen Frears
as Admitting Nurse
Directed by Jon Turteltaub
as Radio Therapist (voice)
Directed by Kevin Lima
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
Ms. Davenport
Catch Me If You Can (2002)
Performance score7.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Ms. Davenport gives Margaret Travolta a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Rob's Mom
High Fidelity (2000)
Performance score7.0
High Fidelity asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Rob's Mom is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Economist
Traffic (2000)
Performance score7.0
Traffic asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Economist is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Admitting Nurse
While You Were Sleeping (1995)
Performance score6.9
While You Were Sleeping asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Admitting Nurse 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 Ms. Davenport
Start here. Catch Me If You Can is the clearest statement of what Margaret Travolta does — accessible, 141 minutes, and rated 8.2 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Margaret 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.
While You Were Sleeping (1995)
A deliberate change of key after Catch Me If You Can — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
High Fidelity (2000)
Keeps the romance register of While You Were Sleeping but asks for a colder reading of it.
Traffic (2000)
Keeps the drama register of High Fidelity but asks for a colder reading of it.
Enchanted (2007)
A deliberate change of key after Traffic — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Nora Ephron
Director
2 films together
Notably Michael
Jon Turteltaub
Director
1 film together
Notably While You Were Sleeping
Andrew Davis
Director
1 film together
Notably Chain Reaction
Stephen Frears
Director
1 film together
Notably High Fidelity
Steven Spielberg
Director
1 film together
Notably Catch Me If You Can
John McTiernan
Director
1 film together
Notably Basic
Dennis Dugan
Director
1 film together
Notably National Security
F. Gary Gray
Director
1 film together
Notably Be Cool
Steve Pink
Director
1 film together
Notably Accepted
Kevin Lima
Director
1 film together
Notably Enchanted
John Travolta
Director
1 film together
Notably Propeller One-Way Night Coach
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Nora Ephron
Director
2 films together · 5.5 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
MichaelSteven Spielberg
Director
1 film together · 8.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Catch Me If You CanStephen Frears
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
High FidelityJon Turteltaub
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
While You Were SleepingKevin Lima
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
EnchantedSteve Pink
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
AcceptedJohn McTiernan
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BasicJohn Travolta
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Propeller One-Way Night CoachDennis Dugan
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
National SecurityAndrew Davis
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Chain ReactionF. Gary Gray
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Be CoolSix 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
Catch Me If You Can
as Ms. Davenport
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
High Fidelity
as Rob's Mom
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Catch Me If You Can
as Ms. Davenport
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Traffic
as Economist
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Catch Me If You Can
as Ms. Davenport
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. Margaret Travolta 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
31 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
10 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
Catch Me If You Can
as Ms. Davenport
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Catch Me If You Can
as Ms. Davenport
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Enchanted
as Radio Therapist (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Ocean's Thirteen
as Bank's Secretary
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Catch Me If You Can
as Ms. Davenport
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Wild Hogs
as Dana
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
High Fidelity
as Rob's Mom
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Catch Me If You Can
as Ms. Davenport
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: adventure and drama
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: family and comedy
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: family and comedy
Elliot Page
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
Have your say
Community
Which Margaret Travolta performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
Join the conversation
Reference
Continue exploring
Trending performers
Directors they work with
Collections to read next
