Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3466
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Ben Cotton 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.
Ben Cotton appears in 13 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Ben. Gourmet Detective: Roux the Day is the clearest case: a film rated 7.4 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, mystery, tv movie. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Martin Wood, David Milchard, Mark Jean and others, Ben Cotton 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.
Gourmet Detective: Roux the Day (2020) as Ritchie Palmer · Aurora Teagarden Mysteries: Haunted By Murder (2022) as Reggie Harris · The Chronicles of Riddick (2004) as Slam Guard
Career snapshot
Ranked #3466 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
13
2004–2024
Career length
20 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.4
Gourmet Detective: Roux the Day
Average Nutevio score
5.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
Gourmet Detective: Roux the Day
Most frequent director
Martin Wood
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Martin Wood
Most common genre
Drama
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 35m
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
6.3 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. The Day the Earth Stood Still, Slither, Walking Tall — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.3
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.3
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 Day the Earth Stood Still, Slither, Walking Tall.
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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.02 films | 5.72 films | 4.83 films |
| Action | 6.42 films | 6.12 films | — |
| Thriller | 6.02 films | 5.22 films | — |
| Comedy | 6.51 film | — | 0.01 film |
| Crime | — | 5.72 films | 7.32 films |
| Horror | 6.51 film | 5.01 film | 4.31 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2004Walking Tall
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Drug Dealer.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2020Gourmet Detective: Roux the Day
7.4 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
2024Calamity Jane
The current state of the argument, as Wade.
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.
13 of 13 films
as Ritchie Palmer
Directed by Mark Jean
as Reggie Harris
Directed by Martin Wood
as Slam Guard
Directed by David Twohy
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
Ritchie Palmer
Gourmet Detective: Roux the Day (2020)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Ritchie Palmer gives Ben Cotton a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Reggie Harris
Aurora Teagarden Mysteries: Haunted By Murder (2022)
Performance score7.0
Aurora Teagarden Mysteries: Haunted By Murder asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Reggie Harris is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Slam Guard
The Chronicles of Riddick (2004)
Performance score6.6
The Chronicles of Riddick asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Slam Guard is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Wade
Calamity Jane (2024)
Performance score6.5
Calamity Jane asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Wade 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 Ritchie Palmer
Start here. Gourmet Detective: Roux the Day is the clearest statement of what Ben Cotton does — accessible, 83 minutes, and rated 7.4 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Ben 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.
The Chronicles of Riddick (2004)
A deliberate change of key after Gourmet Detective: Roux the Day — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Welcome to the Circle (2020)
A deliberate change of key after The Chronicles of Riddick — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Aurora Teagarden Mysteries: Haunted By Murder (2022)
A deliberate change of key after Welcome to the Circle — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Calamity Jane (2024)
A deliberate change of key after Aurora Teagarden Mysteries: Haunted By Murder — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
David Twohy
Director
1 film together
Notably The Chronicles of Riddick
Kevin Bray
Director
1 film together
Notably Walking Tall
James Gunn
Director
1 film together
Notably Slither
Scott Derrickson
Director
1 film together
Notably The Day the Earth Stood Still
Ben Ketai
Director
1 film together
Notably 30 Days of Night: Dark Days
Mark Jean
Director
1 film together
Notably Gourmet Detective: Roux the Day
David Milchard
Director
1 film together
Notably Fu*king Idiots
Martin Wood
Director
1 film together
Notably Aurora Teagarden Mysteries: Haunted By Murder
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Mark Jean
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Gourmet Detective: Roux the DayMartin Wood
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Aurora Teagarden Mysteries: Haunted By MurderDavid Twohy
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Chronicles of RiddickJames Gunn
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SlitherKevin Bray
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Walking TallScott Derrickson
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Day the Earth Stood StillBen Ketai
Director
1 film together · 5.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
30 Days of Night: Dark DaysDavid Milchard
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fu*king IdiotsSix 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
Gourmet Detective: Roux the Day
as Ritchie Palmer
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Walking Tall
as Drug Dealer
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Gourmet Detective: Roux the Day
as Ritchie Palmer
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Day the Earth Stood Still
as Truck Driver
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Gourmet Detective: Roux the Day
as Ritchie Palmer
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. Ben Cotton 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
20 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
7 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
Gourmet Detective: Roux the Day
as Ritchie Palmer
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Gourmet Detective: Roux the Day
as Ritchie Palmer
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Walking Tall
as Drug Dealer
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Aurora Teagarden Mysteries: Haunted By Murder
as Reggie Harris
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Walking Tall
as Drug Dealer
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Walking Tall
as Drug Dealer
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Hammer
as Adams
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Gourmet Detective: Roux the Day
as Ritchie Palmer
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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