Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#4948
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Rosa Salazar 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.
Rosa Salazar appears in 15 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Rosa. A Million Miles Away 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 comedy, horror, action. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Shane Black, Alejandra Márquez Abella, Dean Fleischer Camp and others, Rosa Salazar 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.
A Million Miles Away (2023) as Adela · Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2022) as Larissa · Alita: Battle Angel (2019) as Alita
Career snapshot
Ranked #4948 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
15
2013–2026
Career length
13 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.6
A Million Miles Away
Average Nutevio score
6.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.6
A Million Miles Away
Most frequent director
Wes Ball
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Wes Ball
Most common genre
Action
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 50m
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
2010s
6.5 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Alita: Battle Angel, Bird Box, Maze Runner: The Death Cure — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.5
Across 8 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.5
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. Alita: Battle Angel, Bird Box, Maze Runner: The Death Cure.
Most productive era
2010s
8 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 | 6.81 film | 6.74 films |
| Action | 6.75 films | 6.61 film |
| Thriller | 6.84 films | 5.52 films |
| Comedy | 5.72 films | 6.53 films |
| Crime | 6.11 film | 6.61 film |
| Horror | 6.81 film | 6.21 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2013Epic
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Roller Derby Girl (voice).
Career peak
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
2022Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
7.6 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
2026Vampires of the Velvet Lounge
The current state of the argument, as Alexis.
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.
15 of 15 films
as Adela
Directed by Alejandra Márquez Abella
as Alita
Directed by Robert Rodriguez
as Larissa
Directed by Dean Fleischer Camp
as Brenda
Directed by Wes Ball
as Zen
Directed by Shane Black
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
Adela
A Million Miles Away (2023)
Performance score7.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Adela gives Rosa Salazar a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Alita
Alita: Battle Angel (2019)
Performance score7.9
Alita: Battle Angel asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Alita is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Larissa
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2022)
Performance score7.4
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Larissa is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Brenda
Maze Runner: The Death Cure (2018)
Performance score7.2
Maze Runner: The Death Cure asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Brenda 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 Adela
Start here. A Million Miles Away is the clearest statement of what Rosa Salazar does — accessible, 122 minutes, and rated 7.6 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Rosa 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.
Maze Runner: The Death Cure (2018)
A deliberate change of key after A Million Miles Away — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Alita: Battle Angel (2019)
Keeps the action register of Maze Runner: The Death Cure but asks for a colder reading of it.
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2022)
A deliberate change of key after Alita: Battle Angel — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Play Dirty (2025)
A deliberate change of key after Marcel the Shell with Shoes On — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Wes Ball
Director
2 films together
Notably Maze Runner: The Death Cure
Chris Wedge
Director
1 film together
Notably Epic
Robert Schwentke
Director
1 film together
Notably Insurgent
Dax Shepard
Director
1 film together
Notably CHiPs
Susanne Bier
Director
1 film together
Notably Bird Box
Robert Rodriguez
Director
1 film together
Notably Alita: Battle Angel
Kelly Oxford
Director
1 film together
Notably Pink Skies Ahead
Dean Fleischer Camp
Director
1 film together
Notably Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
Alejandra Márquez Abella
Director
1 film together
Notably A Million Miles Away
Shane Black
Director
1 film together
Notably Play Dirty
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Wes Ball
Director
2 films together · 6.9 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Maze Runner: The Death CureAlejandra Márquez Abella
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Million Miles AwayDean Fleischer Camp
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Marcel the Shell with Shoes OnRobert Rodriguez
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Alita: Battle AngelSusanne Bier
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Bird BoxShane Black
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Play DirtyChris Wedge
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
EpicRobert Schwentke
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
InsurgentDax Shepard
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
CHiPsKelly Oxford
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Pink Skies AheadSix 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
A Million Miles Away
as Adela
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
A Million Miles Away
as Adela
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
as Larissa
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Epic
as Roller Derby Girl (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
A Million Miles Away
as Adela
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. Rosa Salazar 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.
Action Legend
Awarded
6 catalogue titles in action, 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
A Million Miles Away
as Adela
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Bird Box
as Lucy
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
A Million Miles Away
as Adela
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Chariot
as Maria Deschaines
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Alita: Battle Angel
as Alita
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Alita: Battle Angel
as Alita
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
as Larissa
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Insurgent
as Lynn
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
Community
Which Rosa Salazar performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
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Reference
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