Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#5222
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Clark Middleton 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.
Clark Middleton appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Clark. Kill Bill: Vol. 2 is the clearest case: a film rated 8.1 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, fantasy, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Ulrich Thomsen, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Bong Joon Ho and others, Clark Middleton 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.
Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004) as Ernie · Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair (2011) as Ernie · Sin City (2005) as Schutz
Career snapshot
Ranked #5222 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
2001–2021
Career length
20 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.1
Kill Bill: Vol. 2
Average Nutevio score
6.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.1
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair
Most frequent director
Quentin Tarantino
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Quentin Tarantino
Most common genre
Comedy
5 titles
Average runtime
2h 9m
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
2010s
7.4 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), Snowpiercer, Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.4
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
7.5
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. Taking Woodstock, Sin City, Kill Bill: Vol. 2.
Most productive era
2000s
4 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 | 6.21 film | 7.22 films | 5.41 film |
| Action | 8.11 film | 7.32 films | — |
| Thriller | 7.82 films | — | — |
| Comedy | 6.62 films | 7.41 film | 5.12 films |
| Crime | 7.82 films | 7.81 film | — |
| Romance | 7.01 film | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2001Serendipity
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Airport Cab Driver.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
8.1 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 Luke Kenneth Hosewell.
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 Ernie
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
as Schutz
Directed by Frank Miller
as Airport Cab Driver
Directed by Unknown
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
Ernie
Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Ernie gives Clark Middleton a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Ernie
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair (2011)
Performance score7.6
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Ernie is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Schutz
Sin City (2005)
Performance score7.4
Sin City asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Schutz is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Sydney
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)
Performance score7.2
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Sydney 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 Ernie
Start here. Kill Bill: Vol. 2 is the clearest statement of what Clark Middleton does — accessible, 136 minutes, and rated 8.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Clark 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.
Serendipity (2001)
A deliberate change of key after Kill Bill: Vol. 2 — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Sin City (2005)
A deliberate change of key after Serendipity — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair (2011)
Keeps the crime register of Sin City but asks for a colder reading of it.
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)
A deliberate change of key after Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Quentin Tarantino
Director
2 films together
Notably Kill Bill: Vol. 2
Frank Miller
Director
1 film together
Notably Sin City
Ang Lee
Director
1 film together
Notably Taking Woodstock
Bong Joon Ho
Director
1 film together
Notably Snowpiercer
Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Director
1 film together
Notably Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Ulrich Thomsen
Director
1 film together
Notably American Sausage Standoff
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Quentin Tarantino
Director
2 films together · 7.9 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Kill Bill: Vol. 2Frank Miller
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Sin CityAlejandro G. Iñárritu
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)Bong Joon Ho
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SnowpiercerAng Lee
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Taking WoodstockUlrich Thomsen
Director
1 film together · 4.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
American Sausage StandoffSix 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
Kill Bill: Vol. 2
as Ernie
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Serendipity
as Airport Cab Driver
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Kill Bill: Vol. 2
as Ernie
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Sin City
as Schutz
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Kill Bill: Vol. 2
as Ernie
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. Clark Middleton 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.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
5 catalogue titles in comedy, 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
Kill Bill: Vol. 2
as Ernie
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Kill Bill: Vol. 2
as Ernie
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Serendipity
as Airport Cab Driver
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Sin City
as Schutz
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Kill Bill: Vol. 2
as Ernie
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair
as Ernie
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Taking Woodstock
as Frank
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Kill Bill: Vol. 2
as Ernie
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Harvey Keitel
Works with the same directors — Quentin Tarantino
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: drama and fantasy
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Song Kang-ho
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Lee Sun-kyun
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Cho Yeo-jeong
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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