Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#15525
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Alexander Lockwood represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 35 years in, and Alexander is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Alexander Lockwood appears in 6 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Alexander. The Sting is the clearest case: a film rated 7.9 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, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Steven Spielberg, George Roy Hill, Alfred Hitchcock and others, Alexander Lockwood 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.
The Sting (1973) as Landlord (uncredited) · North by Northwest (1959) as Judge Anson B. Flynn (uncredited) · Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) as Implantee
Career snapshot
Ranked #15525 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
6
1942–1977
Career length
35 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.9
The Sting
Average Nutevio score
7.3
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.0
The Sting
Most frequent director
Steven Spielberg
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Steven Spielberg
Most common genre
Drama
3 titles
Average runtime
1h 53m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.2
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
7.0
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
1970s
7.5 average MV
The 1970s are where the work and the material meet. Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Sting, Duel — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1970s
7.5
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1970s
7.6
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1940s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Saboteur.
Most productive era
1970s
3 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 | 1940s | 1950s | 1970s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.71 film | 7.72 films |
| Action | — | — | 7.31 film |
| Thriller | 6.71 film | 7.91 film | 7.31 film |
| Comedy | — | — | 7.91 film |
| Crime | — | — | 7.91 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1942Saboteur
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Marine (uncredited).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
7.9 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
1977Close Encounters of the Third Kind
The current state of the argument, as Implantee.
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.
6 of 6 films
as Landlord (uncredited)
Directed by George Roy Hill
as Judge Anson B. Flynn (uncredited)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
as Implantee
Directed by Steven Spielberg
as Old Man in Car
Directed by Steven Spielberg
as Minor Role (uncredited)
Directed by Robert Wise
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
Landlord (uncredited)
The Sting (1973)
Performance score7.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Landlord (uncredited) gives Alexander Lockwood a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Judge Anson B. Flynn (uncredited)
North by Northwest (1959)
Performance score7.7
North by Northwest asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Judge Anson B. Flynn (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Implantee
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Performance score7.2
Close Encounters of the Third Kind asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Implantee is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Old Man in Car
Duel (1971)
Performance score7.2
Duel asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Old Man in Car 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 Landlord (uncredited)
Start here. The Sting is the clearest statement of what Alexander Lockwood does — accessible, 129 minutes, and rated 7.9 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Alexander 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.
Run Silent, Run Deep (1958)
Keeps the drama register of The Sting but asks for a colder reading of it.
North by Northwest (1959)
A deliberate change of key after Run Silent, Run Deep — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Duel (1971)
Keeps the thriller register of North by Northwest but asks for a colder reading of it.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Same director as Duel, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Alfred Hitchcock
Director
2 films together
Notably North by Northwest
Steven Spielberg
Director
2 films together
Notably Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Robert Wise
Director
1 film together
Notably Run Silent, Run Deep
George Roy Hill
Director
1 film together
Notably The Sting
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Steven Spielberg
Director
2 films together · 7.3 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Close Encounters of the Third KindAlfred Hitchcock
Director
2 films together · 7.3 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
North by NorthwestGeorge Roy Hill
Director
1 film together · 7.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The StingRobert Wise
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Run Silent, Run DeepSix 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
The Sting
as Landlord (uncredited)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
North by Northwest
as Judge Anson B. Flynn (uncredited)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
North by Northwest
as Judge Anson B. Flynn (uncredited)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Saboteur
as Marine (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Sting
as Landlord (uncredited)
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. Alexander Lockwood 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
35 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Drama Legend
Awarded
3 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
The Sting
as Landlord (uncredited)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
North by Northwest
as Judge Anson B. Flynn (uncredited)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
North by Northwest
as Judge Anson B. Flynn (uncredited)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Saboteur
as Marine (uncredited)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
North by Northwest
as Judge Anson B. Flynn (uncredited)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Duel
as Old Man in Car
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Sting
as Landlord (uncredited)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
as Implantee
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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David Krumholtz
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Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Edward Norton
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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