Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#4961
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Arliss Howard represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 37 years in, and Arliss is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Arliss Howard appears in 16 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Arliss. Full Metal Jacket is the clearest case: a film rated 8.2 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 western, crime, thriller. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Elliott Lester, David Fincher, Gina Gershon and others, Arliss Howard 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.
Full Metal Jacket (1987) as Pvt. Cowboy · To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995) as Virgil · Moneyball (2011) as John Henry
Career snapshot
Ranked #4961 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
16
1987–2024
Career length
37 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.2
Full Metal Jacket
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.1
Full Metal Jacket
Most frequent director
David Fincher
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With David Fincher
Most common genre
Drama
11 titles
Average runtime
1h 57m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.9
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
6.8
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
2010s
7.2 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Concussion, Moneyball — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.2
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
7.2
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. Tequila Sunrise, Full Metal Jacket.
Most productive era
2020s
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 | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 8.21 film | 7.23 films | 6.52 films | 7.22 films | 5.63 films |
| Action | — | 6.61 film | — | — | — |
| Thriller | 6.11 film | 7.11 film | 6.61 film | — | 6.43 films |
| Comedy | — | 7.51 film | — | — | 4.01 film |
| Crime | 6.11 film | 7.11 film | 6.61 film | — | 6.52 films |
| Romance | 6.11 film | — | 7.01 film | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Pvt. Cowboy. 8.2 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
2024The Thicket
The current state of the argument, as Rev. Ephron Karlsson.
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.
16 of 16 films
as Richard DeTamble
Directed by Robert Schwentke
as Dr. Joseph Maroon
Directed by Peter Landesman
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
Pvt. Cowboy
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Performance score7.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Pvt. Cowboy gives Arliss Howard a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Virgil
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995)
Performance score7.6
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Virgil is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Richard DeTamble
The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)
Performance score7.4
The Time Traveler's Wife asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Richard DeTamble is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Dr. Joseph Maroon
Concussion (2015)
Performance score7.2
Concussion asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Dr. Joseph Maroon 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 Pvt. Cowboy
Start here. Full Metal Jacket is the clearest statement of what Arliss Howard does — accessible, 117 minutes, and rated 8.2 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Arliss 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.
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995)
Keeps the drama register of Full Metal Jacket but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)
Keeps the drama register of To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar but asks for a colder reading of it.
Moneyball (2011)
Keeps the drama register of The Time Traveler's Wife but asks for a colder reading of it.
Concussion (2015)
Keeps the drama register of Moneyball but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Steven Spielberg
Director
2 films together
Notably Amistad
David Fincher
Director
2 films together
Notably Mank
Stanley Kubrick
Director
1 film together
Notably Full Metal Jacket
Robert Towne
Director
1 film together
Notably Tequila Sunrise
Oliver Stone
Director
1 film together
Notably Natural Born Killers
Joby Harold
Director
1 film together
Notably Awake
Robert Schwentke
Director
1 film together
Notably The Time Traveler's Wife
Peter Landesman
Director
1 film together
Notably Concussion
Gina Gershon
Director
1 film together
Notably With/In Volume 2
Elliott Lester
Director
1 film together
Notably The Thicket
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Steven Spielberg
Director
2 films together · 6.8 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
AmistadDavid Fincher
Director
2 films together · 6.7 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
MankStanley Kubrick
Director
1 film together · 8.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Full Metal JacketPeter Landesman
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
ConcussionOliver Stone
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Natural Born KillersRobert Schwentke
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Time Traveler's WifeJoby Harold
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
AwakeElliott Lester
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 ThicketRobert Towne
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Tequila SunriseGina Gershon
Director
1 film together · 4.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
With/In Volume 2Six 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
Full Metal Jacket
as Pvt. Cowboy
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 Time Traveler's Wife
as Richard DeTamble
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Full Metal Jacket
as Pvt. Cowboy
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Natural Born Killers
as Owen Traft
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Full Metal Jacket
as Pvt. Cowboy
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. Arliss Howard 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
37 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
11 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
Full Metal Jacket
as Pvt. Cowboy
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Natural Born Killers
as Owen Traft
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Mank
as Louis B. Mayer
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Awake
as Dr. Jonathan Neyer
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Full Metal Jacket
as Pvt. Cowboy
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Lost World: Jurassic Park
as Peter Ludlow
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Full Metal Jacket
as Pvt. Cowboy
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Full Metal Jacket
as Pvt. Cowboy
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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