Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#30418
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Bill Raymond represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 26 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 Raymond appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Bill. Dogville is the clearest case: a film rated 7.8 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 crime, drama, history. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Steven Spielberg, Tony Gilroy, Lars von Trier and others, Bill Raymond 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.
Dogville (2003) as Mr. Henson · Twelve Monkeys (1995) as Microbiologist · The Crow (1994) as Mickey
Career snapshot
Ranked #30418 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
1988–2014
Career length
26 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.8
Dogville
Average Nutevio score
7.0
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.8
Dogville
Most frequent director
Steven Spielberg
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Steven Spielberg
Most common genre
Drama
8 titles
Average runtime
2h 9m
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
6.7
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
1990s
7.3 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. The Hurricane, Summer of Sam, Twelve Monkeys — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
7.3
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
7.3
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. Eight Men Out.
Most productive era
1990s
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 | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.71 film | 7.02 films | 6.93 films | 6.52 films |
| Action | — | 7.51 film | — | — |
| Thriller | — | 7.23 films | 7.32 films | — |
| Crime | — | 6.51 film | 7.32 films | 6.11 film |
| Romance | — | — | 6.11 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1988Eight Men Out
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Ben Short.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2003Dogville
7.8 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
2014Rob the Mob
The current state of the argument, as Priest.
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.
10 of 10 films
as Mr. Henson
Directed by Lars von Trier
as Microbiologist
Directed by Terry Gilliam
as Mickey
Directed by Alex Proyas
as Paterson Judge
Directed by Norman Jewison
as Schuyler Colfax
Directed by Steven Spielberg
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
Mr. Henson
Dogville (2003)
Performance score7.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Mr. Henson gives Bill Raymond a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Microbiologist
Twelve Monkeys (1995)
Performance score7.5
Twelve Monkeys asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Microbiologist is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Mickey
The Crow (1994)
Performance score7.3
The Crow asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mickey is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Paterson Judge
The Hurricane (1999)
Performance score7.2
The Hurricane asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Paterson Judge 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 Mr. Henson
Start here. Dogville is the clearest statement of what Bill Raymond does — accessible, 178 minutes, and rated 7.8 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 Crow (1994)
Keeps the thriller register of Dogville but asks for a colder reading of it.
Twelve Monkeys (1995)
Keeps the thriller register of The Crow but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Hurricane (1999)
A deliberate change of key after Twelve Monkeys — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Lincoln (2012)
Keeps the drama register of The Hurricane but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
John Sayles
Director
1 film together
Notably Eight Men Out
Alex Proyas
Director
1 film together
Notably The Crow
Terry Gilliam
Director
1 film together
Notably Twelve Monkeys
Spike Lee
Director
1 film together
Notably Summer of Sam
Norman Jewison
Director
1 film together
Notably The Hurricane
Joan Chen
Director
1 film together
Notably Autumn in New York
Lars von Trier
Director
1 film together
Notably Dogville
Tony Gilroy
Director
1 film together
Notably Michael Clayton
Steven Spielberg
Director
1 film together
Notably Lincoln
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Lars von Trier
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
DogvilleTerry Gilliam
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Twelve MonkeysAlex Proyas
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The CrowNorman Jewison
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The HurricaneSteven Spielberg
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
LincolnTony Gilroy
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Michael ClaytonJohn Sayles
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Eight Men OutSpike Lee
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Summer of SamJoan Chen
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Autumn in New YorkSix 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
Twelve Monkeys
as Microbiologist
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Lincoln
as Schuyler Colfax
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Dogville
as Mr. Henson
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Summer of Sam
as Father Cadilli
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Dogville
as Mr. Henson
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 Raymond 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
26 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
8 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
Twelve Monkeys
as Microbiologist
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Dogville
as Mr. Henson
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Lincoln
as Schuyler Colfax
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Twelve Monkeys
as Microbiologist
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Crow
as Mickey
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Crow
as Mickey
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Summer of Sam
as Father Cadilli
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Twelve Monkeys
as Microbiologist
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
Built a career in the same territory: drama and fantasy
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Robert Downey Jr.
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Christian Bale
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Have your say
Community
Which Bill Raymond 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
