Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#6720
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Bill Bailey 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.
Bill Bailey appears in 6 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Bill. Hot Fuzz is the clearest case: a film rated 7.7 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 tv movie, fantasy, family. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Mackenzie Crook, Phil Traill, Susanna White and others, Bill Bailey 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.
Hot Fuzz (2007) as Sergeant Turner · The Smeds and the Smoos (2023) as Grandfather Smed (voice) · The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005) as The Whale (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #6720 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
6
2005–2023
Career length
18 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.7
Hot Fuzz
Average Nutevio score
5.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.6
Hot Fuzz
Most frequent director
Mackenzie Crook
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Mackenzie Crook
Most common genre
Comedy
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 25m
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
7.2 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Hot Fuzz, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
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
2000s
7.1
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. Hot Fuzz, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Most productive era
2000s
2 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Action | 7.71 film | — | — |
| Comedy | 7.22 films | 6.32 films | 0.01 film |
| Crime | 7.71 film | — | — |
| Romance | — | 6.41 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2005The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Where our catalogue meets this career, as The Whale (voice).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2007Hot Fuzz
7.7 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
The current state of the argument, as Grandfather Smed (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.
6 of 6 films
as Sergeant Turner
Directed by Edgar Wright
as Grandfather Smed (voice)
Directed by Unknown
as Bill Matthews
Directed by Phil Traill
as The Whale (voice)
Directed by Garth Jennings
as Mr Peregrine
Directed by Mackenzie Crook
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
Sergeant Turner
Hot Fuzz (2007)
Performance score7.5
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Sergeant Turner gives Bill Bailey a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Grandfather Smed (voice)
The Smeds and the Smoos (2023)
Performance score7.3
The Smeds and the Smoos asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Grandfather Smed (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Bill Matthews
Chalet Girl (2011)
Performance score6.6
Chalet Girl asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Bill Matthews is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
The Whale (voice)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
Performance score6.6
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. The Whale (voice) 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 Sergeant Turner
Start here. Hot Fuzz is the clearest statement of what Bill Bailey does — accessible, 121 minutes, and rated 7.7 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Bill 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 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
Keeps the comedy register of Hot Fuzz but asks for a colder reading of it.
Chalet Girl (2011)
Keeps the comedy register of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy but asks for a colder reading of it.
Worzel Gummidge: Calliope Jane (2021)
Keeps the comedy register of Chalet Girl but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Smeds and the Smoos (2023)
Keeps the tv movie register of Worzel Gummidge: Calliope Jane but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Garth Jennings
Director
1 film together
Notably The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Edgar Wright
Director
1 film together
Notably Hot Fuzz
Susanna White
Director
1 film together
Notably Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang
Phil Traill
Director
1 film together
Notably Chalet Girl
Mackenzie Crook
Director
1 film together
Notably Worzel Gummidge: Calliope Jane
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Edgar Wright
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hot FuzzGarth 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
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the GalaxyPhil Traill
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Chalet GirlSusanna 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 BangMackenzie Crook
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Worzel Gummidge: Calliope JaneSix 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
Hot Fuzz
as Sergeant Turner
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 Smeds and the Smoos
as Grandfather Smed (voice)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Hot Fuzz
as Sergeant Turner
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
as The Whale (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Hot Fuzz
as Sergeant Turner
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. Bill Bailey 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
5 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
Hot Fuzz
as Sergeant Turner
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Hot Fuzz
as Sergeant Turner
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Smeds and the Smoos
as Grandfather Smed (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Smeds and the Smoos
as Grandfather Smed (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Hot Fuzz
as Sergeant Turner
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Hot Fuzz
as Sergeant Turner
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Hot Fuzz
as Sergeant Turner
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Hot Fuzz
as Sergeant Turner
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and fantasy
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and action
Catherine Lagaʻaia
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and family
Dwayne Johnson
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and family
Have your say
Community
Which Bill Bailey performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
Join the conversation
Reference
Continue exploring
Trending performers
Directors they work with
Collections to read next
