Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#33949
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Clarence Smith represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 26 years in, and Clarence is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Clarence Smith appears in 4 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Clarence. Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace is the clearest case: a film rated 6.8 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 action, crime, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Gareth Evans, Philippa Lowthorpe, George Lucas, Clarence Smith 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.
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) as Fighter Pilot Bravo 3 · Find Me Falling (2024) as Jimmy · Havoc (2025) as Detective (Tsui's)
Career snapshot
Ranked #33949 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
4
1999–2025
Career length
26 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.8
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
6.6
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
Most frequent director
Gareth Evans
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Gareth Evans
Most common genre
Action
2 titles
Average runtime
1h 51m
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
1990s
6.8 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
6.8
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
6.6
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. Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace.
Most productive era
2020s
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 | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.42 films |
| Action | 6.81 film | 6.41 film |
| Thriller | — | 6.41 film |
| Comedy | — | 6.52 films |
| Crime | — | 6.41 film |
| Romance | — | 6.61 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance
1999Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Fighter Pilot Bravo 3. 6.8 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
2024Find Me Falling
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2025Havoc
The current state of the argument, as Detective (Tsui's).
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.
4 of 4 films
as Jimmy
Directed by Unknown
as Fighter Pilot Bravo 3
Directed by George Lucas
as Detective (Tsui's)
Directed by Gareth Evans
as Prime Minister Gairy
Directed by Philippa Lowthorpe
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
Jimmy
Find Me Falling (2024)
Performance score6.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Jimmy gives Clarence Smith a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Fighter Pilot Bravo 3
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)
Performance score6.7
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Fighter Pilot Bravo 3 is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Detective (Tsui's)
Havoc (2025)
Performance score6.5
Havoc asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Detective (Tsui's) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Prime Minister Gairy
Misbehaviour (2020)
Performance score6.5
Misbehaviour asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Prime Minister Gairy 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 Jimmy
Start here. Find Me Falling is the clearest statement of what Clarence Smith does — accessible, 94 minutes, and rated 6.6 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Clarence 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.
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)
A deliberate change of key after Find Me Falling — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Misbehaviour (2020)
A deliberate change of key after Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Havoc (2025)
Keeps the drama register of Misbehaviour but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
George Lucas
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom MenaceGareth Evans
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
HavocPhilippa Lowthorpe
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
MisbehaviourSix 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
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
as Fighter Pilot Bravo 3
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Find Me Falling
as Jimmy
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
as Fighter Pilot Bravo 3
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Misbehaviour
as Prime Minister Gairy
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Find Me Falling
as Jimmy
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. Clarence Smith 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
26 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
2 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
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
as Fighter Pilot Bravo 3
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Havoc
as Detective (Tsui's)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Find Me Falling
as Jimmy
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Havoc
as Detective (Tsui's)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
as Fighter Pilot Bravo 3
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
as Fighter Pilot Bravo 3
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Misbehaviour
as Prime Minister Gairy
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
as Fighter Pilot Bravo 3
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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