Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#13186
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Clé Bennett represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 26 years in, and Clé is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Clé Bennett appears in 6 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Clé. Barney's Version is the clearest case: a film rated 7.0 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 action, crime, thriller. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Michael Patrick Jann, Richard J. Lewis, Clé Bennett 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.
Barney's Version (2010) as Cedric · 1992 (2024) as Copeland · Jigsaw (2017) as Keith Hunt
Career snapshot
Ranked #13186 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
6
1998–2024
Career length
26 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.0
Barney's Version
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.0
Barney's Version
Most frequent director
Michael Patrick Jann
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Michael Patrick Jann
Most common genre
Horror
3 titles
Average runtime
1h 45m
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
6.4
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
2020s
6.5 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. 1992, Organ Trail — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
6.5
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
6.5
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. Urban Legend.
Most productive era
2010s
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 | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 7.01 film | 6.11 film |
| Action | — | 5.41 film | 6.91 film |
| Thriller | — | 5.41 film | 6.91 film |
| Comedy | — | 7.01 film | — |
| Crime | — | 5.41 film | 6.91 film |
| Horror | 5.71 film | 6.21 film | 6.11 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1998Urban Legend
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Dorky Guy.
Highest rated performance
2010Barney's Version
7.0 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak · Most recent film
20241992
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once. The current state of the argument, as Copeland.
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.
6 of 6 films
as Cedric
Directed by Richard J. Lewis
as Erik
Directed by Michael Patrick Jann
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
Copeland
1992 (2024)
Performance score7.1
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Copeland gives Clé Bennett a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Cedric
Barney's Version (2010)
Performance score6.9
Barney's Version asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Cedric is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Erik
Organ Trail (2023)
Performance score6.5
Organ Trail asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Erik is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Leroy
Lucky Day (2019)
Performance score6.5
Lucky Day asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Leroy 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 Copeland
Start here. 1992 is the clearest statement of what Clé Bennett does — accessible, 96 minutes, and rated 6.9 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Clé 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.
Barney's Version (2010)
A deliberate change of key after 1992 — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Jigsaw (2017)
A deliberate change of key after Barney's Version — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Lucky Day (2019)
Same director as Jigsaw, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Organ Trail (2023)
A deliberate change of key after Lucky Day — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
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.
Richard J. Lewis
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Barney's VersionMichael Patrick Jann
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Organ TrailSix 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
Barney's Version
as Cedric
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Barney's Version
as Cedric
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Barney's Version
as Cedric
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Urban Legend
as Dorky Guy
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
1992
as Copeland
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. Clé Bennett 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.
Horror Legend
Awarded
3 catalogue titles in horror, 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
Jigsaw
as Keith Hunt
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
1992
as Copeland
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Barney's Version
as Cedric
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Jigsaw
as Keith Hunt
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
1992
as Copeland
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
1992
as Copeland
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Barney's Version
as Cedric
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Barney's Version
as Cedric
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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