Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3332
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Brian Geraghty 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.
Brian Geraghty appears in 21 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Brian. My Days of Mercy is the clearest case: a film rated 7.3 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 comedy, drama, history. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Joe Berlinger, Michael Angarano, Tali Shalom-Ezer and others, Brian Geraghty 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.
My Days of Mercy (2018) as Weldon · The Hurt Locker (2008) as Specialist Owen Eldridge · An American Crime (2007) as Bradley
Career snapshot
Ranked #3332 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
21
2005–2025
Career length
20 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.3
My Days of Mercy
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
My Days of Mercy
Most frequent director
Joe Berlinger
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Joe Berlinger
Most common genre
Drama
17 titles
Average runtime
1h 45m
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
6.6 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. The Luckiest Man in America, Red Right Hand, Blindfire — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
6.6
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
6.5
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 Hurt Locker, An American Crime, I Know Who Killed Me.
Most productive era
2000s
10 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 | 6.88 films | 5.87 films | 6.52 films |
| Action | 7.11 film | — | 6.61 film |
| Thriller | 5.92 films | 6.11 film | 6.72 films |
| Comedy | 6.11 film | 5.82 films | 6.31 film |
| Crime | 7.31 film | 6.52 films | 6.72 films |
| Romance | 6.31 film | 7.31 film | — |
| Horror | 5.83 films | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2005Jarhead
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Fergus O'Donnell.
Highest rated performance
7.3 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
2008The Hurt Locker
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2025The Luckiest Man in America
The current state of the argument, as Ed.
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.
21 of 21 films
as Specialist Owen Eldridge
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow
as Weldon
Directed by Tali Shalom-Ezer
as Bradley
Directed by Tommy O'Haver
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
Specialist Owen Eldridge
The Hurt Locker (2008)
Performance score7.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Specialist Owen Eldridge gives Brian Geraghty a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Will Bishop
Blindfire (2020)
Performance score7.4
Blindfire asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Will Bishop is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Weldon
My Days of Mercy (2018)
Performance score7.2
My Days of Mercy asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Weldon is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Bradley
An American Crime (2007)
Performance score7.2
An American Crime asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Bradley 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 Specialist Owen Eldridge
Start here. The Hurt Locker is the clearest statement of what Brian Geraghty does — accessible, 131 minutes, and rated 7.3 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Brian 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.
An American Crime (2007)
Keeps the drama register of The Hurt Locker but asks for a colder reading of it.
Flight (2012)
Keeps the drama register of An American Crime but asks for a colder reading of it.
My Days of Mercy (2018)
Keeps the drama register of Flight but asks for a colder reading of it.
Blindfire (2020)
Keeps the drama register of My Days of Mercy but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Sam Mendes
Director
1 film together
Notably Jarhead
Emilio Estevez
Director
1 film together
Notably Bobby
McG
Director
1 film together
Notably We Are Marshall
Andrew Davis
Director
1 film together
Notably The Guardian
Terry Zwigoff
Director
1 film together
Notably Art School Confidential
Simon West
Director
1 film together
Notably When a Stranger Calls
Tommy O'Haver
Director
1 film together
Notably An American Crime
Kathryn Bigelow
Director
1 film together
Notably The Hurt Locker
Robert Zemeckis
Director
1 film together
Notably Flight
Tali Shalom-Ezer
Director
1 film together
Notably My Days of Mercy
Michael Angarano
Director
1 film together
Notably Avenues
Joe Berlinger
Director
1 film together
Notably Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Tali Shalom-Ezer
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
My Days of MercyKathryn Bigelow
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Hurt LockerTommy O'Haver
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
An American CrimeAndrew Davis
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The GuardianJoe Berlinger
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and VileRobert Zemeckis
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
FlightMcG
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
We Are MarshallSam Mendes
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
JarheadEmilio Estevez
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BobbyMichael Angarano
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
AvenuesTerry Zwigoff
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Art School ConfidentialSimon West
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
When a Stranger CallsSix 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
The Hurt Locker
as Specialist Owen Eldridge
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
My Days of Mercy
as Weldon
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
An American Crime
as Bradley
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Art School Confidential
as Stoob
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Hurt Locker
as Specialist Owen Eldridge
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. Brian Geraghty 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
17 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
An American Crime
as Bradley
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
An American Crime
as Bradley
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
My Days of Mercy
as Weldon
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
I Know Who Killed Me
as Jerrod Pointer
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Guardian
as Billy Hodge
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Guardian
as Billy Hodge
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Luckiest Man in America
as Ed
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Red Right Hand
as Sheriff Hollister
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
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
Have your say
Community
Which Brian Geraghty 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
