Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#6602
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Marisa Coughlan represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 26 years in, and Marisa is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Marisa Coughlan appears in 8 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Marisa. Blue Eyed Girl is the clearest case: a film rated 6.1 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 mystery, comedy, crime. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Jay Chandrasekhar, Jack Plotnick, Melisa Wallack and others, Marisa Coughlan 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.
Blue Eyed Girl (2025) as Jane · Meet Bill (2007) as Laura · Super Troopers 2 (2018) as Ursula Hanson
Career snapshot
Ranked #6602 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
8
2000–2026
Career length
26 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.1
Blue Eyed Girl
Average Nutevio score
5.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
6.1
Blue Eyed Girl
Most frequent director
Jay Chandrasekhar
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Jay Chandrasekhar
Most common genre
Comedy
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 35m
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
6.3
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
5.9 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Super Troopers 3, Blue Eyed Girl, Infamous — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
5.9
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
5.8
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. Meet Bill, Freddy Got Fingered, Gossip.
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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.11 film | 4.91 film | 6.11 film |
| Thriller | 5.81 film | — | — |
| Comedy | 5.42 films | 5.42 films | 5.92 films |
| Crime | — | 5.91 film | 5.82 films |
| Romance | 6.11 film | — | 6.11 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2000Gossip
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Sheila.
Highest rated performance
2007Meet Bill
6.1 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
2025Blue Eyed Girl
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2026Super Troopers 3
The current state of the argument, as Ursula.
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.
8 of 8 films
as Jane
Directed by Unknown
as Ursula
Directed by Jay Chandrasekhar
as Ursula Hanson
Directed by Jay Chandrasekhar
as Misty
Directed by Jack Plotnick
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
Jane
Blue Eyed Girl (2025)
Performance score6.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Jane gives Marisa Coughlan a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Ursula
Super Troopers 3 (2026)
Performance score6.5
Super Troopers 3 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Ursula is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Janet
Infamous (2020)
Performance score6.5
Infamous asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Janet is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Ursula Hanson
Super Troopers 2 (2018)
Performance score6.5
Super Troopers 2 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Ursula Hanson 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 Jane
Start here. Blue Eyed Girl is the clearest statement of what Marisa Coughlan does — accessible, 97 minutes, and rated 6.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Marisa 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.
Space Station 76 (2014)
Keeps the comedy register of Blue Eyed Girl but asks for a colder reading of it.
Super Troopers 2 (2018)
Keeps the comedy register of Space Station 76 but asks for a colder reading of it.
Infamous (2020)
Keeps the crime register of Super Troopers 2 but asks for a colder reading of it.
Super Troopers 3 (2026)
Keeps the crime register of Infamous but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Jay Chandrasekhar
Director
2 films together
Notably Super Troopers 2
Davis Guggenheim
Director
1 film together
Notably Gossip
Tom Green
Director
1 film together
Notably Freddy Got Fingered
Melisa Wallack
Director
1 film together
Notably Meet Bill
Jack Plotnick
Director
1 film together
Notably Space Station 76
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Jay Chandrasekhar
Director
2 films together · 5.8 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Super Troopers 2Melisa Wallack
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Meet BillDavis Guggenheim
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
GossipJack Plotnick
Director
1 film together · 4.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Space Station 76Tom Green
Director
1 film together · 4.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Freddy Got FingeredSix 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
Blue Eyed Girl
as Jane
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Meet Bill
as Laura
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Meet Bill
as Laura
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Meet Bill
as Laura
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Blue Eyed Girl
as Jane
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. Marisa Coughlan 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
26 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
Super Troopers 2
as Ursula Hanson
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Gossip
as Sheila
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Meet Bill
as Laura
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Gossip
as Sheila
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Meet Bill
as Laura
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Super Troopers 3
as Ursula
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Blue Eyed Girl
as Jane
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Meet Bill
as Laura
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: crime and drama
Zach Grenier
Built a career in the same territory: crime and mystery
Richmond Arquette
Built a career in the same territory: crime and mystery
Bob Stephenson
Built a career in the same territory: crime and mystery
Robert Downey Jr.
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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