Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#14787
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Clu Gulager represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 55 years in, and Clu is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Clu Gulager appears in 7 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Clu. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood is the clearest case: a film rated 7.6 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, drama, thriller. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Quentin Tarantino, Jack Sholder, Dan O'Bannon and others, Clu Gulager 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 Hollywood (2019) as Book Store Man · The Last Picture Show (1971) as Abilene · The Return of the Living Dead (1985) as Burt
Career snapshot
Ranked #14787 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
7
1964–2019
Career length
55 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.6
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
Average Nutevio score
6.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.6
The Last Picture Show
Most frequent director
Quentin Tarantino
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Quentin Tarantino
Most common genre
Horror
4 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
6.9
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
7.0
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
7.3 average MV
The 1970s are where the work and the material meet. The Last Picture Show — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1970s
7.3
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1970s
7.6
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1960s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Killers.
Most productive era
1980s
2 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 | 1960s | 1970s | 1980s | 2000s | 2010s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 7.31 film | — | — | 7.61 film |
| Thriller | — | — | — | — | 7.61 film |
| Comedy | — | — | 7.11 film | — | 7.61 film |
| Crime | 6.71 film | — | — | — | — |
| Romance | — | 7.31 film | — | — | — |
| Horror | — | — | 6.52 films | 6.21 film | 6.61 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1964The Killers
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Lee.
Career peak
1985The Return of the Living Dead
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
2019Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
7.6 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
2019Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street
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.
7 of 7 films
as Burt
Directed by Dan O'Bannon
as Book Store Man
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
as Lee
Directed by Don Siegel
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
Burt
The Return of the Living Dead (1985)
Performance score7.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Burt gives Clu Gulager a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Book Store Man
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019)
Performance score7.4
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Book Store Man is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Abilene
The Last Picture Show (1971)
Performance score7.2
The Last Picture Show asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Abilene is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Lee
The Killers (1964)
Performance score6.9
The Killers asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Lee 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 Burt
Start here. The Return of the Living Dead is the clearest statement of what Clu Gulager does — accessible, 91 minutes, and rated 7.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Clu 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 Killers (1964)
A deliberate change of key after The Return of the Living Dead — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Last Picture Show (1971)
A deliberate change of key after The Killers — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019)
Keeps the drama register of The Last Picture Show but asks for a colder reading of it.
Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street (2019)
A deliberate change of key after Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Don Siegel
Director
1 film together
Notably The Killers
Peter Bogdanovich
Director
1 film together
Notably The Last Picture Show
Dan O'Bannon
Director
1 film together
Notably The Return of the Living Dead
Jack Sholder
Director
1 film together
Notably A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge
Quentin Tarantino
Director
1 film together
Notably Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Quentin Tarantino
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Once Upon a Time... in HollywoodPeter Bogdanovich
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Last Picture ShowDan O'Bannon
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Return of the Living DeadDon Siegel
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The KillersJack Sholder
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's RevengeSix 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
The Last Picture Show
as Abilene
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 Last Picture Show
as Abilene
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
The Last Picture Show
as Abilene
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
as Book Store Man
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Return of the Living Dead
as Burt
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. Clu Gulager 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
55 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
4 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
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
as Book Store Man
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Killers
as Lee
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Last Picture Show
as Abilene
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Killers
as Lee
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
as Book Store Man
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Return of the Living Dead
as Burt
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Last Picture Show
as Abilene
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge
as Ken Walsh
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
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: crime and drama
Christopher Walken
Works with the same directors — Quentin Tarantino
Zach Grenier
Built a career in the same territory: crime and mystery
Richmond Arquette
Built a career in the same territory: crime and mystery
Have your say
Community
Which Clu Gulager performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
Join the conversation
Reference
Continue exploring
Trending performers
Directors they work with
Collections to read next
