Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#39382
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Cornell Womack works on quiet performance 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.
Cornell Womack appears in 3 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Cornell. State of Play 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 quiet performance, transformation, versatility. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for action, science fiction, adventure. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Michael Bay, Kevin Macdonald, M. Night Shyamalan, Cornell Womack 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.
State of Play (2009) as Junior Detective #1 · Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) as FBI Director · The Happening (2008) as Construction Foreman
Career snapshot
Ranked #39382 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
3
2008–2009
Career length
1 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.8
State of Play
Average Nutevio score
6.1
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
6.8
State of Play
Most frequent director
Michael Bay
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Michael Bay
Most common genre
Science Fiction
2 titles
Average runtime
2h 2m
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
6.1
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
2000s
6.1 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, State of Play, The Happening — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.1
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.1
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. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, State of Play, The Happening.
Most productive era
2000s
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 | 2000s |
|---|---|
| Action | 6.21 film |
| Thriller | 6.12 films |
| Crime | 6.81 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2008The Happening
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Construction Foreman.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2009State of Play
6.8 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 Junior Detective #1.
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.
3 of 3 films
as Junior Detective #1
Directed by Kevin Macdonald
as FBI Director
Directed by Michael Bay
as Construction Foreman
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
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
Junior Detective #1
State of Play (2009)
Performance score6.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Junior Detective #1 gives Cornell Womack a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
FBI Director
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
Performance score6.5
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. FBI Director is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Construction Foreman
The Happening (2008)
Performance score6.5
The Happening asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Construction Foreman 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 Junior Detective #1
Start here. State of Play is the clearest statement of what Cornell Womack does — accessible, 127 minutes, and rated 6.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Cornell 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 Happening (2008)
Keeps the thriller register of State of Play but asks for a colder reading of it.
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
Keeps the science fiction register of The Happening 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.
Kevin Macdonald
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
State of PlayMichael Bay
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Transformers: Revenge of the FallenM. Night Shyamalan
Director
1 film together · 5.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The HappeningSix 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
State of Play
as Junior Detective #1
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
as FBI Director
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
State of Play
as Junior Detective #1
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
as FBI Director
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
State of Play
as Junior Detective #1
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. Cornell Womack 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.
Science Fiction Legend
Awarded
2 catalogue titles in science fiction, 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
State of Play
as Junior Detective #1
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
State of Play
as Junior Detective #1
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
as FBI Director
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
State of Play
as Junior Detective #1
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
as FBI Director
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
as FBI Director
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
as FBI Director
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
State of Play
as Junior Detective #1
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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