Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#13398
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Alejandro Patiño represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 25 years in, and Alejandro is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Alejandro Patiño appears in 12 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Alejandro. Jerome is the clearest case: a film rated 9.0 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, drama, thriller. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with John Butler, Joel Coen, Matt Piedmont and others, Alejandro Patiño 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.
Jerome (2023) as Abuelo Rivera · The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) as Cantina Bartender (segment "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs") · Iron Man 2 (2010) as Strawberry Vendor
Career snapshot
Ranked #13398 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
12
1999–2024
Career length
25 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
9.0
Jerome
Average Nutevio score
6.3
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
9.0
Jerome
Most frequent director
John Butler
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With John Butler
Most common genre
Drama
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 38m
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
2020s
7.0 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Tacoma, Jerome — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
7.0
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
7.0
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. Bowfinger.
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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.71 film | 6.33 films | 7.02 films |
| Action | — | 5.72 films | 7.11 film | — |
| Thriller | — | 6.71 film | — | 4.91 film |
| Comedy | 6.21 film | 5.32 films | 5.93 films | — |
| Crime | — | 6.71 film | — | — |
| Romance | — | 5.81 film | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1999Bowfinger
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Sanchez.
First Nutevio masterpiece · Highest rated performance · Career peak
2023Jerome
The first film here to clear 9.0 on our scale — a threshold fewer than one film in ten reaches. 9.0 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
2024Tacoma
The current state of the argument, as Carlos Chavez.
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 Cantina Bartender (segment "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs")
Directed by Joel Coen
as Strawberry Vendor
Directed by Jon Favreau
as Gas Truck Driver
Directed by Justin Lin
as Construction Worker
Directed by Joe Wright
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
Abuelo Rivera
Jerome (2023)
Performance score8.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Abuelo Rivera gives Alejandro Patiño a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Cantina Bartender (segment "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs")
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
Performance score7.0
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Cantina Bartender (segment "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs") is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Strawberry Vendor
Iron Man 2 (2010)
Performance score7.0
Iron Man 2 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Strawberry Vendor is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Gas Truck Driver
Fast & Furious (2009)
Performance score6.6
Fast & Furious asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Gas Truck Driver 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 Abuelo Rivera
Start here. Jerome is the clearest statement of what Alejandro Patiño does — accessible, 15 minutes, and rated 9.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Alejandro 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.
Fast & Furious (2009)
A deliberate change of key after Jerome — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Soloist (2009)
A deliberate change of key after Fast & Furious — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Iron Man 2 (2010)
A deliberate change of key after The Soloist — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
A deliberate change of key after Iron Man 2 — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Frank Oz
Director
1 film together
Notably Bowfinger
Bobby Farrelly
Director
1 film together
Notably The Heartbreak Kid
Joe Wright
Director
1 film together
Notably The Soloist
Justin Lin
Director
1 film together
Notably Fast & Furious
Floria Sigismondi
Director
1 film together
Notably The Runaways
Jon Favreau
Director
1 film together
Notably Iron Man 2
Matt Piedmont
Director
1 film together
Notably Casa de Mi Padre
Joel Coen
Director
1 film together
Notably The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
John Butler
Director
1 film together
Notably Papi Chulo
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Joel Coen
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Ballad of Buster ScruggsJon Favreau
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Iron Man 2Justin Lin
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fast & FuriousJoe Wright
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The SoloistFloria Sigismondi
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The RunawaysFrank Oz
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BowfingerBobby Farrelly
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Heartbreak KidJohn Butler
Director
1 film together · 5.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Papi ChuloMatt Piedmont
Director
1 film together · 5.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Casa de Mi PadreSix 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
Jerome
as Abuelo Rivera
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
The Soloist
as Construction Worker
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Jerome
as Abuelo Rivera
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Soloist
as Construction Worker
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Jerome
as Abuelo Rivera
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. Alejandro Patiño 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
25 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
6 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
Jerome
as Abuelo Rivera
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Jerome
as Abuelo Rivera
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Runaways
as Grocery Store Manager
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Fast & Furious
as Gas Truck Driver
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Jerome
as Abuelo Rivera
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Iron Man 2
as Strawberry Vendor
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
as Cantina Bartender (segment "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs")
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Iron Man 2
as Strawberry Vendor
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Morgan Freeman
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Edward Norton
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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