Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#5559
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Buck Taylor represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 30 years in, and Buck is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Buck Taylor appears in 8 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Buck. Tombstone is the clearest case: a film rated 7.5 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, drama. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for action, western, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with David Mackenzie, Jon Favreau, Barry Sonnenfeld and others, Buck Taylor 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.
Tombstone (1993) as Turkey Creek Jack Johnson · Hell or High Water (2016) as Old Man · Flicka (2006) as Wagner
Career snapshot
Ranked #5559 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
8
1993–2023
Career length
30 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.5
Tombstone
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.6
Tombstone
Most frequent director
David Mackenzie
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With David Mackenzie
Most common genre
Action
5 titles
Average runtime
2h 4m
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
6.5
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
6.9 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Flicka — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.9
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.9
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1990s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Wild Wild West, Gettysburg, Tombstone.
Most productive era
1990s
3 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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.81 film | 6.91 film | 6.32 films | — |
| Action | 6.52 films | — | 5.52 films | 6.51 film |
| Thriller | — | — | 5.71 film | — |
| Comedy | 5.61 film | — | — | — |
| Crime | — | — | 7.31 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1993Gettysburg
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Col. William Gamble.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1993Tombstone
7.5 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 Sheriff Cleetus.
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.
8 of 8 films
as Turkey Creek Jack Johnson
Directed by George P. Cosmatos
as Old Man
Directed by David Mackenzie
as Col. William Gamble
Directed by Ronald F. Maxwell
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
Turkey Creek Jack Johnson
Tombstone (1993)
Performance score7.3
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Turkey Creek Jack Johnson gives Buck Taylor a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Old Man
Hell or High Water (2016)
Performance score7.2
Hell or High Water asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Old Man is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Wagner
Flicka (2006)
Performance score6.8
Flicka asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Wagner is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Sheriff Cleetus
Two Sinners and a Mule (2023)
Performance score6.7
Two Sinners and a Mule asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Sheriff Cleetus 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 Turkey Creek Jack Johnson
Start here. Tombstone is the clearest statement of what Buck Taylor does — accessible, 130 minutes, and rated 7.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Buck 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.
Gettysburg (1993)
A deliberate change of key after Tombstone — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Flicka (2006)
Keeps the drama register of Gettysburg but asks for a colder reading of it.
Hell or High Water (2016)
Keeps the drama register of Flicka but asks for a colder reading of it.
Two Sinners and a Mule (2023)
Keeps the western register of Hell or High Water but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
George P. Cosmatos
Director
1 film together
Notably Tombstone
Ronald F. Maxwell
Director
1 film together
Notably Gettysburg
Barry Sonnenfeld
Director
1 film together
Notably Wild Wild West
Jon Favreau
Director
1 film together
Notably Cowboys & Aliens
David Mackenzie
Director
1 film together
Notably Hell or High Water
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
George P. Cosmatos
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
TombstoneDavid Mackenzie
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hell or High WaterRonald F. Maxwell
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
GettysburgJon Favreau
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Cowboys & AliensBarry Sonnenfeld
Director
1 film together · 5.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Wild Wild WestSix 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
Tombstone
as Turkey Creek Jack Johnson
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Flicka
as Wagner
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Tombstone
as Turkey Creek Jack Johnson
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Gettysburg
as Col. William Gamble
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Tombstone
as Turkey Creek Jack Johnson
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. Buck Taylor 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
30 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.
Action Legend
Awarded
5 catalogue titles in action, 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
Tombstone
as Turkey Creek Jack Johnson
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Tombstone
as Turkey Creek Jack Johnson
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Flicka
as Wagner
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Hell or High Water
as Old Man
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Tombstone
as Turkey Creek Jack Johnson
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Two Sinners and a Mule
as Sheriff Cleetus
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Gettysburg
as Col. William Gamble
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Wild Wild West
as Cross-Eyed Reb
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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