Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3582
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Sara Paxton represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 29 years in, and Sara is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Sara Paxton appears in 12 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Sara. Weapons is the clearest case: a film rated 7.3 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 science fiction, comedy, animation. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Annie Bradley, Zach Cregger, Chelsea Peretti and others, Sara Paxton 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.
Weapons (2025) as Erica · Barbarian (2022) as Nursing Video Narration / Assistant / Megan · Liar Liar (1997) as Child at Party and School
Career snapshot
Ranked #3582 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
12
1997–2026
Career length
29 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.3
Weapons
Average Nutevio score
5.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
Weapons
Most frequent director
Zach Cregger
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Zach Cregger
Most common genre
Comedy
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 36m
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
1990s
6.6 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Soldier, Liar Liar — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
6.6
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
6.6
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. Soldier, Liar Liar.
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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.41 film | — | 5.91 film | 5.91 film |
| Action | 6.41 film | 5.31 film | — | — |
| Thriller | — | — | — | 3.52 films |
| Comedy | 6.81 film | 6.03 films | — | 4.32 films |
| Romance | — | 6.51 film | — | — |
| Horror | — | — | — | 7.12 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1997Liar Liar
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Child at Party and School.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2025Weapons
7.3 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
2026Killer Clown
The current state of the argument, as Elizabeth Helmer.
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 Erica
Directed by Zach Cregger
as Aquamarine
Directed by Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum
as Nursing Video Narration / Assistant / Megan
Directed by Zach Cregger
as Child at Party and School
Directed by Tom Shadyac
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
Erica
Weapons (2025)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Erica gives Sara Paxton a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Aquamarine
Aquamarine (2006)
Performance score7.0
Aquamarine asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Aquamarine is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Nursing Video Narration / Assistant / Megan
Barbarian (2022)
Performance score6.8
Barbarian asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Nursing Video Narration / Assistant / Megan is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Child at Party and School
Liar Liar (1997)
Performance score6.7
Liar Liar asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Child at Party and School 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 Erica
Start here. Weapons is the clearest statement of what Sara Paxton does — accessible, 129 minutes, and rated 7.3 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Sara 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.
Liar Liar (1997)
A deliberate change of key after Weapons — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Aquamarine (2006)
Keeps the comedy register of Liar Liar but asks for a colder reading of it.
Barbarian (2022)
A deliberate change of key after Aquamarine — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Mars (2026)
A deliberate change of key after Barbarian — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Zach Cregger
Director
2 films together
Notably Weapons
Tom Shadyac
Director
1 film together
Notably Liar Liar
Paul W. S. Anderson
Director
1 film together
Notably Soldier
Joe Nussbaum
Director
1 film together
Notably Sleepover
Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum
Director
1 film together
Notably Aquamarine
Craig Mazin
Director
1 film together
Notably Superhero Movie
Jason Reitman
Director
1 film together
Notably The Front Runner
Andrew Dominik
Director
1 film together
Notably Blonde
Chelsea Peretti
Director
1 film together
Notably First Time Female Director
Annie Bradley
Director
1 film together
Notably Killer Clown
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Zach Cregger
Director
2 films together · 7.1 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
WeaponsTom Shadyac
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Liar LiarElizabeth Allen Rosenbaum
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
AquamarinePaul W. S. Anderson
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SoldierJoe Nussbaum
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SleepoverAndrew Dominik
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BlondeJason Reitman
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Front RunnerCraig Mazin
Director
1 film together · 5.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Superhero MovieChelsea Peretti
Director
1 film together · 3.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
First Time Female DirectorAnnie Bradley
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Killer ClownSix 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
Weapons
as Erica
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Aquamarine
as Aquamarine
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Weapons
as Erica
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Liar Liar
as Child at Party and School
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Weapons
as Erica
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. Sara Paxton 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
29 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.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
6 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
Weapons
as Erica
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Weapons
as Erica
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Aquamarine
as Aquamarine
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Barbarian
as Nursing Video Narration / Assistant / Megan
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Soldier
as Angie
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Soldier
as Angie
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Aquamarine
as Aquamarine
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Liar Liar
as Child at Party and School
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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