Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#21941
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Billy Wickman 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.
Billy Wickman appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Billy. 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 romance, comedy, tv movie. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with David Winning, Mark Jean, Drew Goddard and others, Billy Wickman 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 Daniel Whelan · War for the Planet of the Apes (2017) as Gasping Soldier · A Summer Romance (2019) as Larry
Career snapshot
Ranked #21941 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
2010–2021
Career length
11 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.4
Gourmet Detective: Roux the Day
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
Gourmet Detective: Roux the Day
Most frequent director
David Winning
3 films together
Longest collaboration
3×
With David Winning
Most common genre
Comedy
4 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
6.3
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
2020s
7.0 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. You, Me and the Christmas Trees, Gourmet Detective: Roux the Day — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
7.0
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
7.0
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2010s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. 37 Teen, A Blue Ridge Mountain Christmas, A Summer Romance.
Most productive era
2010s
7 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 | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.02 films | 7.02 films |
| Action | 6.41 film | — |
| Thriller | 6.81 film | — |
| Comedy | 6.43 films | 6.61 film |
| Crime | 6.62 films | 7.41 film |
| Romance | 6.62 films | 6.61 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2010The A-Team
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Flight Control Tech.
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
2021You, Me and the Christmas Trees
The current state of the argument, as Elliott.
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.
9 of 9 films
as Daniel Whelan
Directed by Mark Jean
as Gasping Soldier
Directed by Matt Reeves
as Larry
Directed by David Winning
as Hutch Summerspring
Directed by Drew Goddard
as Elliott
Directed by David Winning
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
Daniel Whelan
Gourmet Detective: Roux the Day (2020)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Daniel Whelan gives Billy Wickman a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Gasping Soldier
War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)
Performance score7.1
War for the Planet of the Apes asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Gasping Soldier is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Larry
A Summer Romance (2019)
Performance score6.8
A Summer Romance asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Larry is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Hutch Summerspring
Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)
Performance score6.7
Bad Times at the El Royale asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Hutch Summerspring 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 Daniel Whelan
Start here. Gourmet Detective: Roux the Day is the clearest statement of what Billy Wickman 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 Billy 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.
War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)
Keeps the drama register of Gourmet Detective: Roux the Day but asks for a colder reading of it.
Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)
Keeps the drama register of War for the Planet of the Apes but asks for a colder reading of it.
A Summer Romance (2019)
A deliberate change of key after Bad Times at the El Royale — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
You, Me and the Christmas Trees (2021)
Same director as A Summer Romance, 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.
David Winning
Director
3 films together
Notably A Summer Romance
Joe Carnahan
Director
1 film together
Notably The A-Team
Matt Reeves
Director
1 film together
Notably War for the Planet of the Apes
Drew Goddard
Director
1 film together
Notably Bad Times at the El Royale
Mark Jean
Director
1 film together
Notably Gourmet Detective: Roux the Day
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
David Winning
Director
3 films together · 6.6 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
A Summer RomanceMark 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 DayMatt Reeves
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
War for the Planet of the ApesDrew Goddard
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Bad Times at the El RoyaleJoe Carnahan
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The A-TeamSix 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
War for the Planet of the Apes
as Gasping Soldier
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
You, Me and the Christmas Trees
as Elliott
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 Daniel Whelan
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The A-Team
as Flight Control Tech
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 Daniel Whelan
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. Billy Wickman 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
4 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
Gourmet Detective: Roux the Day
as Daniel Whelan
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 Daniel Whelan
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
You, Me and the Christmas Trees
as Elliott
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Bad Times at the El Royale
as Hutch Summerspring
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Gourmet Detective: Roux the Day
as Daniel Whelan
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The A-Team
as Flight Control Tech
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
You, Me and the Christmas Trees
as Elliott
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Gourmet Detective: Roux the Day
as Daniel Whelan
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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Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Jamie Harris
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Elliot Page
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Christian Bale
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Have your say
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Reference
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