Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#9706
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Martha Plimpton represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 40 years in, and Martha is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Martha Plimpton appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Martha. The Goonies is the clearest case: a film rated 7.6 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, drama, thriller. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Fran Kranz, Chris Buck, Allen Coulter and others, Martha Plimpton 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 Goonies (1985) as Stef · Mass (2021) as Gail · Frozen II (2019) as Yelena (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #9706 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
1985–2025
Career length
40 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.6
The Goonies
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.5
The Goonies
Most frequent director
Fran Kranz
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Fran Kranz
Most common genre
Drama
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 37m
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
6.6
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
2010s
7.2 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Frozen II, Remember Me — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.2
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
7.2
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. Parenthood, The Mosquito Coast, The Goonies.
Most productive era
2020s
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 | 1980s | 1990s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.62 films | 6.71 film | 7.11 film | 7.02 films |
| Thriller | — | — | — | 6.71 film |
| Comedy | 7.22 films | 6.71 film | 7.21 film | 6.21 film |
| Crime | — | — | — | 6.71 film |
| Romance | — | 6.71 film | 7.11 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance
1985The Goonies
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Stef. 7.6 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
2021Mass
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.
10 of 10 films
as Stef
Directed by Richard Donner
as Yelena (voice)
Directed by Chris Buck
as Alyssa Craig's Mom (uncredited)
Directed by Allen Coulter
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
Gail
Mass (2021)
Performance score7.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Gail gives Martha Plimpton a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Stef
The Goonies (1985)
Performance score7.7
The Goonies asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Stef is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Yelena (voice)
Frozen II (2019)
Performance score7.1
Frozen II asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Yelena (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Alyssa Craig's Mom (uncredited)
Remember Me (2010)
Performance score7.0
Remember Me asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Alyssa Craig's Mom (uncredited) 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 Gail
Start here. Mass is the clearest statement of what Martha Plimpton does — accessible, 111 minutes, and rated 7.3 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Martha 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 Goonies (1985)
A deliberate change of key after Mass — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Remember Me (2010)
A deliberate change of key after The Goonies — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Frozen II (2019)
A deliberate change of key after Remember Me — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Pitch Black Panacea (2020)
Keeps the comedy register of Frozen II but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Richard Donner
Director
1 film together
Notably The Goonies
Peter Weir
Director
1 film together
Notably The Mosquito Coast
Ron Howard
Director
1 film together
Notably Parenthood
Ted Demme
Director
1 film together
Notably Beautiful Girls
Allen Coulter
Director
1 film together
Notably Remember Me
Chris Buck
Director
1 film together
Notably Frozen II
Fran Kranz
Director
1 film together
Notably Mass
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Richard Donner
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The GooniesFran Kranz
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
MassChris Buck
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Frozen IIAllen Coulter
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Remember MeTed Demme
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Beautiful GirlsRon Howard
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
ParenthoodPeter Weir
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Mosquito CoastSix 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 Goonies
as Stef
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Remember Me
as Alyssa Craig's Mom (uncredited)
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 Goonies
as Stef
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Remember Me
as Alyssa Craig's Mom (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Mass
as Gail
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. Martha Plimpton 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
40 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
6 catalogue titles in drama, 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 Goonies
as Stef
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Sovereign
as Lesley Anne
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Remember Me
as Alyssa Craig's Mom (uncredited)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Sovereign
as Lesley Anne
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Goonies
as Stef
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Mosquito Coast
as Emily Spellgood
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Beautiful Girls
as Jan
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Goonies
as Stef
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Reference
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