Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#14819
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Noémie Merlant 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.
Noémie Merlant appears in 19 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Noémie. Looking for Simone is the clearest case: a film rated 9.0 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 romance, drama, history. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Ellen Kuras, Noémie Merlant, Bess Wohl and others, Noémie Merlant 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.
Looking for Simone (2024) as Narrator · Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) as Marianne · TÁR (2022) as Francesca Lentini
Career snapshot
Ranked #14819 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
19
2019–2026
Career length
7 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
9.0
Looking for Simone
Average Nutevio score
5.1
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
9.0
Looking for Simone
Most frequent director
Noémie Merlant
3 films together
Longest collaboration
3×
With Noémie Merlant
Most common genre
Drama
11 titles
Average runtime
1h 29m
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
2020s
5.3 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Les métamorphoses, au féminin, Les Misérables, Roma elastica — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
5.3
Across 17 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
5.3
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2010s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Republique: The Interactive.
Most productive era
2020s
17 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 | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 4.02 films | 4.99 films |
| Thriller | — | 2.62 films |
| Comedy | — | 4.74 films |
| Crime | — | 6.71 film |
| Romance | 7.91 film | 4.84 films |
| Horror | — | 3.83 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2019Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Marianne.
First Nutevio masterpiece · Highest rated performance · Career peak
The first film here to clear 9.0 on our scale — a threshold fewer than one film in ten reaches. 9.0 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
2026Roma elastica
The current state of the argument, as Valentina.
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.
19 of 19 films
as Francesca Lentini
Directed by Todd Field
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
Narrator
Looking for Simone (2024)
Performance score9.3
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Narrator gives Noémie Merlant a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Marianne
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
Performance score8.4
Portrait of a Lady on Fire asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Marianne is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Francesca Lentini
TÁR (2022)
Performance score7.5
TÁR asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Francesca Lentini is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Nora
Paris, 13th District (2021)
Performance score7.3
Paris, 13th District asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Nora 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 Narrator
Start here. Looking for Simone is the clearest statement of what Noémie Merlant does — accessible, 90 minutes, and rated 9.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Noémie 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.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
A deliberate change of key after Looking for Simone — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Paris, 13th District (2021)
Keeps the romance register of Portrait of a Lady on Fire but asks for a colder reading of it.
TÁR (2022)
Keeps the drama register of Paris, 13th District but asks for a colder reading of it.
Duse (2025)
Keeps the drama register of TÁR but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Noémie Merlant
Director
3 films together
Notably Shakira
Céline Sciamma
Director
1 film together
Notably Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Zoé Wittock
Director
1 film together
Notably Jumbo
Jacques Audiard
Director
1 film together
Notably Paris, 13th District
Louis Garrel
Director
1 film together
Notably The Innocent
Todd Field
Director
1 film together
Notably TÁR
Olivier Nakache
Director
1 film together
Notably A Difficult Year
Bess Wohl
Director
1 film together
Notably Baby Ruby
Ellen Kuras
Director
1 film together
Notably Lee
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Noémie Merlant
Director
3 films together · 5.8 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
ShakiraCéline Sciamma
Director
1 film together · 7.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Portrait of a Lady on FireTodd Field
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
TÁREllen Kuras
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
LeeJacques Audiard
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Paris, 13th DistrictLouis Garrel
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The InnocentOlivier Nakache
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Difficult YearZoé Wittock
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
JumboBess Wohl
Director
1 film together · 5.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Baby RubySix 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
Looking for Simone
as Narrator
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
as Marianne
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Looking for Simone
as Narrator
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Shakira
as The Saleswoman
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Looking for Simone
as Narrator
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. Noémie Merlant 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
11 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
Looking for Simone
as Narrator
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Looking for Simone
as Narrator
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Les Misérables
as Fantine
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Jumbo
as Jeanne
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Looking for Simone
as Narrator
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Looking for Simone
as Narrator
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
as Marianne
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Baby Ruby
as Jo
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
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Reference
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