Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#2387
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Asa Butterfield works on versatility rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Asa Butterfield appears in 22 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Asa. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas 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 comedy, drama, fantasy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Duncan Jones, Eren Celeboglu, Jim O'Hanlon and others, Asa Butterfield 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 Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008) as Bruno · Then Came You (2018) as Calvin · Our Hero, Balthazar (2026) as Solomon
Career snapshot
Ranked #2387 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
22
2007–2026
Career length
19 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.9
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
Average Nutevio score
5.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.8
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
Most frequent director
Jim O'Hanlon
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Jim O'Hanlon
Most common genre
Comedy
10 titles
Average runtime
1h 44m
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
6.2
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
7.3 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, Son of Rambow — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
7.3
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
7.3
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2000s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, Son of Rambow.
Most productive era
2010s
11 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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.91 film | 6.85 films | 7.31 film |
| Action | — | 6.23 films | 0.01 film |
| Thriller | — | — | 5.32 films |
| Comedy | 6.71 film | 6.45 films | 6.74 films |
| Romance | — | 6.82 films | 6.32 films |
| Horror | — | 5.82 films | 5.32 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2007Son of Rambow
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Brethren Boy.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2008The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
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
2026Rogue Trooper
The current state of the argument, as (voice).
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.
22 of 22 films
as Hugo Cabret
Directed by Martin Scorsese
as Calvin
Directed by Unknown
as Stitch Head (voice)
Directed by Unknown
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
Bruno
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008)
Performance score8.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Bruno gives Asa Butterfield a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Hugo Cabret
Hugo (2011)
Performance score7.8
Hugo asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Hugo Cabret is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Calvin
Then Came You (2018)
Performance score7.7
Then Came You asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Calvin is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Solomon
Our Hero, Balthazar (2026)
Performance score7.6
Our Hero, Balthazar asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Solomon 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 Bruno
Start here. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is the clearest statement of what Asa Butterfield does — accessible, 94 minutes, and rated 7.9 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Asa 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.
Hugo (2011)
Keeps the drama register of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas but asks for a colder reading of it.
Then Came You (2018)
Keeps the drama register of Hugo but asks for a colder reading of it.
Stitch Head (2025)
Same director as Then Came You, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Our Hero, Balthazar (2026)
Same director as Stitch Head, 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.
Jim O'Hanlon
Director
2 films together
Notably Your Christmas or Mine?
Garth Jennings
Director
1 film together
Notably Son of Rambow
Mark Herman
Director
1 film together
Notably The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
Susanna White
Director
1 film together
Notably Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang
Joe Johnston
Director
1 film together
Notably The Wolfman
Martin Scorsese
Director
1 film together
Notably Hugo
Gavin Hood
Director
1 film together
Notably Ender's Game
Shari Springer Berman
Director
1 film together
Notably 10,000 Saints
Tim Burton
Director
1 film together
Notably Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
Saul Dibb
Director
1 film together
Notably Journey's End
Andrew Bowler
Director
1 film together
Notably Time Freak
Eren Celeboglu
Director
1 film together
Notably All Fun and Games
Duncan Jones
Director
1 film together
Notably Rogue Trooper
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Jim O'Hanlon
Director
2 films together · 6.3 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Your Christmas or Mine?Mark Herman
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 Boy in the Striped PyjamasMartin Scorsese
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
HugoTim Burton
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar ChildrenAndrew Bowler
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Time FreakGarth Jennings
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Son of RambowGavin Hood
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Ender's GameSaul Dibb
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Journey's EndSusanna White
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Nanny McPhee and the Big BangShari Springer Berman
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
10,000 SaintsJoe Johnston
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 WolfmanEren Celeboglu
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
All Fun and GamesDuncan Jones
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Rogue TrooperSix 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 Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
as Bruno
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Hugo
as Hugo Cabret
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
as Bruno
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Son of Rambow
as Brethren Boy
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
as Bruno
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. Asa Butterfield 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.
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
10 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
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
as Bruno
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
as Bruno
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Land of Sometimes
as The Lad With The Flying Feet (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Land of Sometimes
as The Lad With The Flying Feet (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Hugo
as Hugo Cabret
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Ender's Game
as Ender Wiggin
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
10,000 Saints
as Jude Keffy-Horn
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
as Bruno
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Matt Damon
Works with the same directors — Martin Scorsese
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Leonardo DiCaprio
Works with the same directors — Martin Scorsese
Robert De Niro
Works with the same directors — Martin Scorsese
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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