Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#29317
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Bill Graham represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 51 years in, and Bill is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Bill Graham appears in 11 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Bill. Apocalypse Now is the clearest case: a film rated 8.4 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, quiet performance, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for music, documentary, history. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Todd Haynes, Daniel Roher, Martin Scorsese and others, Bill Graham 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.
Apocalypse Now (1979) as Agent · Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation (2019) as Self · The Last Waltz (1978) as Self
Career snapshot
Ranked #29317 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
11
1970–2021
Career length
51 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.4
Apocalypse Now
Average Nutevio score
7.0
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.3
Apocalypse Now
Most frequent director
Martin Scorsese
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Martin Scorsese
Most common genre
Music
8 titles
Average runtime
2h 17m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.1
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
7.1
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
7.2 average MV
The 1970s are where the work and the material meet. Apocalypse Now, The Last Waltz, A Star Is Born — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1970s
7.2
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1970s
7.4
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1970s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Apocalypse Now, The Last Waltz, A Star Is Born.
Most productive era
1970s
4 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 | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.32 films | 6.51 film | 6.72 films | — | — |
| Crime | — | 6.51 film | 6.31 film | — | — |
| Romance | 6.21 film | — | — | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1970Woodstock
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Self.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1979Apocalypse Now
8.4 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
The current state of the argument, as Self (archive footage).
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.
11 of 11 films
as Agent
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
as Self
Directed by Martin Scorsese
as Self
Directed by Michael Wadleigh
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
Agent
Apocalypse Now (1979)
Performance score8.1
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Agent gives Bill Graham a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Self
Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation (2019)
Performance score7.2
Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Self
The Last Waltz (1978)
Performance score7.1
The Last Waltz asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Self
Woodstock (1970)
Performance score7.0
Woodstock asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self 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 Agent
Start here. Apocalypse Now is the clearest statement of what Bill Graham does — accessible, 147 minutes, and rated 8.4 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.
Woodstock (1970)
A deliberate change of key after Apocalypse Now — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Last Waltz (1978)
Keeps the music register of Woodstock but asks for a colder reading of it.
Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation (2019)
Keeps the music register of The Last Waltz but asks for a colder reading of it.
Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese (2019)
Keeps the music register of Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Francis Ford Coppola
Director
2 films together
Notably Apocalypse Now
Martin Scorsese
Director
2 films together
Notably The Last Waltz
Michael Wadleigh
Director
1 film together
Notably Woodstock
Frank Pierson
Director
1 film together
Notably A Star Is Born
Barry Levinson
Director
1 film together
Notably Bugsy
Oliver Stone
Director
1 film together
Notably The Doors
Barak Goodman
Director
1 film together
Notably Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation
Daniel Roher
Director
1 film together
Notably Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band
Todd Haynes
Director
1 film together
Notably The Velvet Underground
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Francis Ford Coppola
Director
2 films together · 7.5 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Apocalypse NowMartin Scorsese
Director
2 films together · 7.1 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The Last WaltzBarak Goodman
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a GenerationMichael Wadleigh
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
WoodstockOliver Stone
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 DoorsTodd Haynes
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Velvet UndergroundDaniel Roher
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the BandBarry Levinson
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BugsyFrank Pierson
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Star Is BornSix 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
Apocalypse Now
as Agent
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 Doors
as New Haven Promoter
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Apocalypse Now
as Agent
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Woodstock
as Self
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Apocalypse Now
as Agent
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 Graham 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
51 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.
Music Legend
Awarded
8 catalogue titles in music, 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
Apocalypse Now
as Agent
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Apocalypse Now
as Agent
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Doors
as New Haven Promoter
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Bugsy
as Charles "Lucky" Luciano
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Apocalypse Now
as Agent
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Apocalypse Now
as Agent
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Apocalypse Now
as Agent
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
A Star Is Born
as Self
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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Works with the same directors — Martin Scorsese
Robert Downey Jr.
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
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Works with the same directors — Martin Scorsese
Mark Ruffalo
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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