Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#6801
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Samantha Bee 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.
Samantha Bee appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Samantha. Feels Good Man is the clearest case: a film rated 7.1 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 documentary, adventure, family. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Frank Marshall, Jason Moore, Isabel Coixet and others, Samantha Bee 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.
Feels Good Man (2020) as Self - Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (archive footage) · Whatever Works (2009) as Chess Mother · Learning to Drive (2014) as Debbie
Career snapshot
Ranked #6801 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
2007–2023
Career length
16 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.1
Feels Good Man
Average Nutevio score
5.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.1
Whatever Works
Most frequent director
Frank Marshall
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Frank Marshall
Most common genre
Comedy
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 34m
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
2010s
5.8 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Elliot: The Littlest Reindeer, Sisters, Learning to Drive — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
5.8
Across 5 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
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. Whatever Works, The Love Guru, Underdog.
Most productive era
2010s
5 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 | — | 6.21 film | — |
| Action | 5.61 film | 6.11 film | — |
| Comedy | 5.63 films | 5.84 films | — |
| Romance | 5.62 films | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2007Underdog
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Principal.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2009Whatever Works
7.1 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
2023Rather
The current state of the argument, as Self - Comedian & Producer.
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 Self - Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (archive footage)
Directed by Unknown
as Chess Mother
Directed by Woody Allen
as Self - Comedian & Producer
Directed by Frank Marshall
as Hazel (voice)
Directed by Unknown
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
Self - Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (archive footage)
Feels Good Man (2020)
Performance score7.0
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Self - Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (archive footage) gives Samantha Bee a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Chess Mother
Whatever Works (2009)
Performance score7.0
Whatever Works asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Chess Mother is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Self - Comedian & Producer
Rather (2023)
Performance score6.5
Rather asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self - Comedian & Producer is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Hazel (voice)
Elliot: The Littlest Reindeer (2018)
Performance score6.5
Elliot: The Littlest Reindeer asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Hazel (voice) 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 Self - Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (archive footage)
Start here. Feels Good Man is the clearest statement of what Samantha Bee does — accessible, 94 minutes, and rated 7.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Samantha 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.
Whatever Works (2009)
A deliberate change of key after Feels Good Man — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Sisters (2015)
Keeps the comedy register of Whatever Works but asks for a colder reading of it.
Elliot: The Littlest Reindeer (2018)
A deliberate change of key after Sisters — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Rather (2023)
A deliberate change of key after Elliot: The Littlest Reindeer — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Marco Schnabel
Director
1 film together
Notably The Love Guru
Woody Allen
Director
1 film together
Notably Whatever Works
Roger Kumble
Director
1 film together
Notably Furry Vengeance
Shawn Levy
Director
1 film together
Notably Date Night
Isabel Coixet
Director
1 film together
Notably Learning to Drive
Jason Moore
Director
1 film together
Notably Sisters
Frank Marshall
Director
1 film together
Notably Rather
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Woody Allen
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Whatever WorksIsabel Coixet
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Learning to DriveShawn Levy
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Date NightJason Moore
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SistersRoger Kumble
Director
1 film together · 5.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Furry VengeanceMarco Schnabel
Director
1 film together · 4.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Love GuruFrank Marshall
Director
1 film together · 3.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
RatherSix 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
Feels Good Man
as Self - Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (archive footage)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Elliot: The Littlest Reindeer
as Hazel (voice)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Whatever Works
as Chess Mother
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Date Night
as Woman in Times Square (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Feels Good Man
as Self - Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (archive footage)
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. Samantha Bee 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.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
7 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
Feels Good Man
as Self - Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (archive footage)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Feels Good Man
as Self - Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (archive footage)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Elliot: The Littlest Reindeer
as Hazel (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Feels Good Man
as Self - Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (archive footage)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Date Night
as Woman in Times Square (uncredited)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Date Night
as Woman in Times Square (uncredited)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Learning to Drive
as Debbie
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Feels Good Man
as Self - Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (archive footage)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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