Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#9429
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Burt Young represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 47 years in, and Burt is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Burt Young appears in 22 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Burt. Once Upon a Time in America 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, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for documentary, action, romance. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Derek Wayne Johnson, Gabriel Sabloff, Fatih Akin and others, Burt Young 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.
Once Upon a Time in America (1984) as Joe · Rocky (1976) as Paulie Pennino · Chinatown (1974) as Curly
Career snapshot
Ranked #9429 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
22
1974–2021
Career length
47 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.4
Once Upon a Time in America
Average Nutevio score
6.0
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.4
Once Upon a Time in America
Most frequent director
Sylvester Stallone
4 films together
Longest collaboration
4×
With Sylvester Stallone
Most common genre
Drama
13 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
6.9
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
1970s
7.7 average MV
The 1970s are where the work and the material meet. Rocky II, Rocky, Chinatown — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1970s
7.7
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1970s
7.7
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. Rocky II, Rocky, Chinatown.
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 | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.62 films | 7.53 films | 5.81 film | 6.52 films | 4.75 films | — |
| Action | — | 6.31 film | — | 4.41 film | — | 6.01 film |
| Thriller | 7.81 film | — | — | — | — | — |
| Comedy | — | 6.32 films | — | 5.22 films | 3.92 films | — |
| Crime | 7.81 film | 7.32 films | — | — | 5.33 films | — |
| Romance | — | — | — | 6.01 film | 4.31 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1974Chinatown
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Curly.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1984Once Upon a Time in America
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.
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.
22 of 22 films
as Paulie Pennino
Directed by John G. Avildsen
as Curly
Directed by Roman Polanski
as Self (archive footage)
Directed by Derek Wayne Johnson
as Paulie Pennino
Directed by Sylvester Stallone
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
Joe
Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
Performance score8.3
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Joe gives Burt Young a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Paulie Pennino
Rocky (1976)
Performance score8.2
Rocky asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Paulie Pennino is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Curly
Chinatown (1974)
Performance score7.8
Chinatown asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Curly is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Self (archive footage)
40 Years of Rocky: The Birth of a Classic (2020)
Performance score7.6
40 Years of Rocky: The Birth of a Classic asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self (archive footage) 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 Joe
Start here. Once Upon a Time in America is the clearest statement of what Burt Young does — accessible, 229 minutes, and rated 8.4 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Burt 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.
Chinatown (1974)
Keeps the crime register of Once Upon a Time in America but asks for a colder reading of it.
Rocky (1976)
A deliberate change of key after Chinatown — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Rocky II (1979)
Keeps the drama register of Rocky but asks for a colder reading of it.
40 Years of Rocky: The Birth of a Classic (2020)
A deliberate change of key after Rocky II — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Sylvester Stallone
Director
4 films together
Notably Rocky II
John G. Avildsen
Director
2 films together
Notably Rocky
Derek Wayne Johnson
Director
2 films together
Notably 40 Years of Rocky: The Birth of a Classic
Roman Polanski
Director
1 film together
Notably Chinatown
Stuart Rosenberg
Director
1 film together
Notably The Pope of Greenwich Village
Sergio Leone
Director
1 film together
Notably Once Upon a Time in America
Alan Metter
Director
1 film together
Notably Back to School
Ron Underwood
Director
1 film together
Notably The Adventures of Pluto Nash
Fatih Akin
Director
1 film together
Notably New York, I Love You
Gabriel Sabloff
Director
1 film together
Notably Beckman
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Sylvester Stallone
Director
4 films together · 7.1 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 4 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Rocky IIJohn G. Avildsen
Director
2 films together · 6.8 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
RockyDerek Wayne Johnson
Director
2 films together · 6.7 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
40 Years of Rocky: The Birth of a ClassicSergio Leone
Director
1 film together · 8.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Once Upon a Time in AmericaRoman Polanski
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
ChinatownAlan Metter
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Back to SchoolStuart Rosenberg
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Pope of Greenwich VillageGabriel Sabloff
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BeckmanFatih Akin
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
New York, I Love YouRon Underwood
Director
1 film together · 4.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Adventures of Pluto NashSix 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
Chinatown
as Curly
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 Brawler
as Salvatore
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Once Upon a Time in America
as Joe
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
New York, I Love You
as Landlord
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Once Upon a Time in America
as Joe
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. Burt Young 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
47 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
13 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
Chinatown
as Curly
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Once Upon a Time in America
as Joe
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Brawler
as Salvatore
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Chinatown
as Curly
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Once Upon a Time in America
as Joe
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Pope of Greenwich Village
as Bed Bug Eddie
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
New York, I Love You
as Landlord
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Rocky IV
as Paulie Pennino
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Matt Damon
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Have your say
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Reference
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