Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#12281
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Chris William Martin 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.
Chris William Martin appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Chris. Remarkably Bright Creatures is the clearest case: a film rated 8.0 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 mystery, drama, science fiction. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Olivia Newman, Paul Shapiro, Lee Toland Krieger and others, Chris William Martin 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.
Remarkably Bright Creatures (2026) as Simon Brinks · The Age of Adaline (2015) as Dale Davenport · Chronicle Mysteries: Recovered (2019) as Chris Patterson
Career snapshot
Ranked #12281 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
2008–2026
Career length
18 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.0
Remarkably Bright Creatures
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.5
Remarkably Bright Creatures
Most frequent director
Paul Shapiro
3 films together
Longest collaboration
3×
With Paul Shapiro
Most common genre
Drama
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 35m
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
6.5
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
2010s
6.7 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Chronicle Mysteries: Recovered, Heaven, Death of a Cheerleader — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.7
Across 6 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.7
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. Chaos Theory.
Most productive era
2010s
6 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 | 6.41 film | 6.74 films | 6.42 films |
| Thriller | — | 6.72 films | — |
| Comedy | 6.41 film | — | — |
| Crime | — | 6.82 films | — |
| Romance | 6.41 film | 7.51 film | — |
| Horror | — | — | 4.81 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2008Chaos Theory
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Damon.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2026Remarkably Bright Creatures
8.0 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. The current state of the argument, as Simon Brinks.
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 Dale Davenport
Directed by Lee Toland Krieger
as Chris Patterson
Directed by Unknown
as Sheriff Randall
Directed by Paul Shapiro
as Luke Casteel
Directed by Paul Shapiro
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
Simon Brinks
Remarkably Bright Creatures (2026)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Simon Brinks gives Chris William Martin a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Dale Davenport
The Age of Adaline (2015)
Performance score7.3
The Age of Adaline asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Dale Davenport is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Chris Patterson
Chronicle Mysteries: Recovered (2019)
Performance score6.9
Chronicle Mysteries: Recovered asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Chris Patterson is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Sheriff Randall
Death of a Cheerleader (2019)
Performance score6.6
Death of a Cheerleader asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Sheriff Randall 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 Simon Brinks
Start here. Remarkably Bright Creatures is the clearest statement of what Chris William Martin does — accessible, 114 minutes, and rated 8.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Chris 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 Age of Adaline (2015)
Keeps the drama register of Remarkably Bright Creatures but asks for a colder reading of it.
Chronicle Mysteries: Recovered (2019)
A deliberate change of key after The Age of Adaline — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Death of a Cheerleader (2019)
Keeps the tv movie register of Chronicle Mysteries: Recovered but asks for a colder reading of it.
Dark Angel (2019)
Same director as Death of a Cheerleader, 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.
Paul Shapiro
Director
3 films together
Notably Death of a Cheerleader
Marcos Siega
Director
1 film together
Notably Chaos Theory
Rodrigo Cortés
Director
1 film together
Notably Buried
Lee Toland Krieger
Director
1 film together
Notably The Age of Adaline
Olivia Newman
Director
1 film together
Notably Remarkably Bright Creatures
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Paul Shapiro
Director
3 films together · 6.4 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Death of a CheerleaderOlivia Newman
Director
1 film together · 8.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Remarkably Bright CreaturesLee Toland Krieger
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 Age of AdalineRodrigo Cortés
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BuriedMarcos Siega
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Chaos TheorySix 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
Remarkably Bright Creatures
as Simon Brinks
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 Age of Adaline
as Dale Davenport
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Remarkably Bright Creatures
as Simon Brinks
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Age of Adaline
as Dale Davenport
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Remarkably Bright Creatures
as Simon Brinks
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. Chris William Martin 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
7 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
Remarkably Bright Creatures
as Simon Brinks
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Remarkably Bright Creatures
as Simon Brinks
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Age of Adaline
as Dale Davenport
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Chronicle Mysteries: Recovered
as Chris Patterson
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Remarkably Bright Creatures
as Simon Brinks
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Chronicle Mysteries: Recovered
as Chris Patterson
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Age of Adaline
as Dale Davenport
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Chronicle Mysteries: Recovered
as Chris Patterson
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
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and drama
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and drama
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: crime and drama
Zach Grenier
Built a career in the same territory: crime and mystery
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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