Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#4305
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Samantha Mathis represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 36 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 Mathis appears in 17 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Samantha. American Psycho 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 romance, comedy, fantasy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Thomas Percy Kim, Joshua John Miller, Ewan McGregor and others, Samantha Mathis 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.
American Psycho (2000) as Courtney Rawlinson · Little Women (1994) as Older Amy March · Pump Up the Volume (1990) as Nora Diniro
Career snapshot
Ranked #4305 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
17
1990–2026
Career length
36 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.6
American Psycho
Average Nutevio score
5.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.4
American Psycho
Most frequent director
Thomas Percy Kim
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Thomas Percy Kim
Most common genre
Drama
9 titles
Average runtime
1h 43m
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
2000s
6.5 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. The New Daughter, The Punisher, American Psycho — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.5
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.4
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1990s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Broken Arrow, How to Make an American Quilt, Little Women.
Most productive era
1990s
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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.64 films | 7.02 films | 6.32 films | 0.01 film |
| Action | 6.11 film | 6.41 film | — | — |
| Thriller | 6.11 film | 6.52 films | 6.32 films | 5.01 film |
| Comedy | 4.51 film | — | — | 5.91 film |
| Crime | — | 7.02 films | 6.32 films | — |
| Romance | 6.63 films | — | — | 5.91 film |
| Horror | — | 5.41 film | 6.11 film | 5.32 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Nora Diniro.
Career peak
1994Little Women
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
2000American Psycho
7.6 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
2026By Design
The current state of the argument, as Lisa.
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.
17 of 17 films
as Older Amy March
Directed by Unknown
as Courtney Rawlinson
Directed by Mary Harron
as Linda Conroy (voice)
Directed by Rodrigo Cortés
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
Older Amy March
Little Women (1994)
Performance score7.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Older Amy March gives Samantha Mathis a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Courtney Rawlinson
American Psycho (2000)
Performance score7.4
American Psycho asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Courtney Rawlinson is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Nora Diniro
Pump Up the Volume (1990)
Performance score7.2
Pump Up the Volume asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Nora Diniro is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Cindy
The Clovehitch Killer (2018)
Performance score6.9
The Clovehitch Killer asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Cindy 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 Older Amy March
Start here. Little Women is the clearest statement of what Samantha Mathis does — accessible, 115 minutes, and rated 7.3 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.
Pump Up the Volume (1990)
Keeps the drama register of Little Women but asks for a colder reading of it.
American Psycho (2000)
Keeps the drama register of Pump Up the Volume but asks for a colder reading of it.
Buried (2010)
Keeps the thriller register of American Psycho but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Clovehitch Killer (2018)
A deliberate change of key after Buried — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Allan Moyle
Director
1 film together
Notably Pump Up the Volume
Peter Bogdanovich
Director
1 film together
Notably The Thing Called Love
Jocelyn Moorhouse
Director
1 film together
Notably How to Make an American Quilt
John Woo
Director
1 film together
Notably Broken Arrow
Mary Harron
Director
1 film together
Notably American Psycho
Jonathan Hensleigh
Director
1 film together
Notably The Punisher
Rodrigo Cortés
Director
1 film together
Notably Buried
Ewan McGregor
Director
1 film together
Notably American Pastoral
Joshua John Miller
Director
1 film together
Notably The Exorcism
Thomas Percy Kim
Director
1 film together
Notably Isle Child
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Mary Harron
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
American PsychoAllan Moyle
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Pump Up the VolumeRodrigo Cortés
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BuriedJonathan Hensleigh
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 PunisherJocelyn Moorhouse
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
How to Make an American QuiltEwan McGregor
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
American PastoralJohn Woo
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Broken ArrowPeter Bogdanovich
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Thing Called LoveJoshua John Miller
Director
1 film together · 5.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The ExorcismThomas Percy Kim
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Isle ChildSix 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
American Psycho
as Courtney Rawlinson
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Little Women
as Older Amy March
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
American Psycho
as Courtney Rawlinson
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
How to Make an American Quilt
as Young Sophia
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Little Women
as Older Amy March
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 Mathis 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
36 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
9 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
American Psycho
as Courtney Rawlinson
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
American Psycho
as Courtney Rawlinson
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
How to Make an American Quilt
as Young Sophia
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Clovehitch Killer
as Cindy
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
American Psycho
as Courtney Rawlinson
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Broken Arrow
as Terry Carmichael
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Pump Up the Volume
as Nora Diniro
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
American Psycho
as Courtney Rawlinson
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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