Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#2848
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Samantha Bond represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 33 years in, and Samantha is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Samantha Bond appears in 12 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Samantha. Downton Abbey: A New Era is the clearest case: a film rated 7.2 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, tv movie. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Simon Curtis, Maclain Nelson, Tommy Boulding and others, Samantha Bond 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.
Downton Abbey: A New Era (2022) as Lady Rosamund Painswick · GoldenEye (1995) as Moneypenny · The Presence of Love (2022) as Merryn
Career snapshot
Ranked #2848 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
12
1989–2022
Career length
33 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.2
Downton Abbey: A New Era
Average Nutevio score
6.1
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.2
Downton Abbey: A New Era
Most frequent director
Simon Curtis
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Simon Curtis
Most common genre
Thriller
8 titles
Average runtime
1h 48m
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
6.5
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
1990s
6.6 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. The World Is Not Enough, Tomorrow Never Dies, GoldenEye — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
6.6
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
6.5
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. Erik the Viking.
Most productive era
2020s
6 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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | — | — | — | 6.14 films |
| Action | — | 6.63 films | 6.01 film | 5.31 film | 5.21 film |
| Thriller | — | 6.63 films | 6.01 film | 5.31 film | 5.43 films |
| Comedy | 5.91 film | — | — | — | 5.41 film |
| Crime | — | — | — | — | 5.21 film |
| Romance | — | — | — | — | 6.92 films |
| Horror | — | — | — | — | 5.73 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1989Erik the Viking
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Helga.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
7.2 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
2022Hounded
The current state of the argument, as Katherine Redwick.
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.
12 of 12 films
as Lady Rosamund Painswick
Directed by Simon Curtis
as Moneypenny
Directed by Martin Campbell
as Merryn
Directed by Maclain Nelson
as Gillian Burrows
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.
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The defining work
#1
Lady Rosamund Painswick
Downton Abbey: A New Era (2022)
Performance score7.1
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Lady Rosamund Painswick gives Samantha Bond a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Moneypenny
GoldenEye (1995)
Performance score6.9
GoldenEye asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Moneypenny is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Merryn
The Presence of Love (2022)
Performance score6.6
The Presence of Love asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Merryn is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Gillian Burrows
The Kindred (2021)
Performance score6.6
The Kindred asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Gillian Burrows 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 Lady Rosamund Painswick
Start here. Downton Abbey: A New Era is the clearest statement of what Samantha Bond does — accessible, 124 minutes, and rated 7.2 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.
GoldenEye (1995)
A deliberate change of key after Downton Abbey: A New Era — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Kindred (2021)
A deliberate change of key after GoldenEye — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Presence of Love (2022)
A deliberate change of key after The Kindred — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Stranger in Our Bed (2022)
A deliberate change of key after The Presence of Love — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Terry Jones
Director
1 film together
Notably Erik the Viking
Martin Campbell
Director
1 film together
Notably GoldenEye
Roger Spottiswoode
Director
1 film together
Notably Tomorrow Never Dies
Michael Apted
Director
1 film together
Notably The World Is Not Enough
Lee Tamahori
Director
1 film together
Notably Die Another Day
Tommy Boulding
Director
1 film together
Notably Hounded
Maclain Nelson
Director
1 film together
Notably The Presence of Love
Simon Curtis
Director
1 film together
Notably Downton Abbey: A New Era
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Simon Curtis
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Downton Abbey: A New EraMartin Campbell
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
GoldenEyeMaclain Nelson
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Presence of LoveRoger Spottiswoode
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Tomorrow Never DiesMichael Apted
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The World Is Not EnoughLee Tamahori
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Die Another DayTerry Jones
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Erik the VikingTommy Boulding
Director
1 film together · 5.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
HoundedSix 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
Downton Abbey: A New Era
as Lady Rosamund Painswick
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Downton Abbey: A New Era
as Lady Rosamund Painswick
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
GoldenEye
as Moneypenny
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Downton Abbey: A New Era
as Lady Rosamund Painswick
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Downton Abbey: A New Era
as Lady Rosamund Painswick
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 Bond 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
33 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.
Thriller Legend
Awarded
8 catalogue titles in thriller, 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
Downton Abbey: A New Era
as Lady Rosamund Painswick
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
GoldenEye
as Moneypenny
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Downton Abbey: A New Era
as Lady Rosamund Painswick
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Stranger in Our Bed
as Isadora
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
GoldenEye
as Moneypenny
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Die Another Day
as Moneypenny
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Downton Abbey: A New Era
as Lady Rosamund Painswick
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
GoldenEye
as Moneypenny
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
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Reference
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