Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#8134
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Cotter Smith represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 36 years in, and Cotter is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Cotter Smith appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Cotter. The Post 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 mystery, horror, thriller. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Shari Springer Berman, Steven Spielberg, Jennifer Westfeldt and others, Cotter 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.
The Post (2017) as Under Secretary William Macomber · You Don't Know Jack (2010) as Dick Thompson · X2 (2003) as President McKenna
Career snapshot
Ranked #8134 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
1989–2025
Career length
36 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.0
The Post
Average Nutevio score
6.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.0
X2
Most frequent director
Shari Springer Berman
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Shari Springer Berman
Most common genre
Drama
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 52m
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
6.6
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
7.0 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. X2 — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
7.0
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
7.0
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1980s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. K-9.
Most productive era
2010s
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 | 1980s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | — | 6.54 films | 6.51 film |
| Action | 6.31 film | 7.01 film | — | — |
| Thriller | — | — | 6.11 film | 5.61 film |
| Comedy | 6.31 film | — | 6.01 film | — |
| Crime | 6.31 film | — | 6.11 film | — |
| Romance | — | — | 6.01 film | — |
| Horror | — | — | — | 5.72 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1989K-9
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Gilliam.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2003X2
7.0 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
2025Time of Death
The current state of the argument, as Pat.
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 Under Secretary William Macomber
Directed by Steven Spielberg
as Dick Thompson
Directed by Barry Levinson
as President McKenna
Directed by Bryan Singer
as Pat
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
Under Secretary William Macomber
The Post (2017)
Performance score6.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Under Secretary William Macomber gives Cotter Smith a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Dick Thompson
You Don't Know Jack (2010)
Performance score6.9
You Don't Know Jack asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Dick Thompson is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
President McKenna
X2 (2003)
Performance score6.9
X2 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. President McKenna is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Pat
Time of Death (2025)
Performance score6.5
Time of Death asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Pat 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 Under Secretary William Macomber
Start here. The Post is the clearest statement of what Cotter Smith does — accessible, 116 minutes, and rated 7.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Cotter 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.
X2 (2003)
A deliberate change of key after The Post — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
You Don't Know Jack (2010)
A deliberate change of key after X2 — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Rustin (2023)
Keeps the drama register of You Don't Know Jack but asks for a colder reading of it.
Time of Death (2025)
Same director as Rustin, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Rod Daniel
Director
1 film together
Notably K-9
Bryan Singer
Director
1 film together
Notably X2
Barry Levinson
Director
1 film together
Notably You Don't Know Jack
Jennifer Westfeldt
Director
1 film together
Notably Friends with Kids
Steven Spielberg
Director
1 film together
Notably The Post
Shari Springer Berman
Director
1 film together
Notably Things Heard & Seen
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Steven Spielberg
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The PostBarry Levinson
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
You Don't Know JackBryan Singer
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
X2Rod Daniel
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
K-9Jennifer Westfeldt
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Friends with KidsShari Springer Berman
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Things Heard & SeenSix 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
X2
as President McKenna
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 Post
as Under Secretary William Macomber
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
X2
as President McKenna
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Post
as Under Secretary William Macomber
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Post
as Under Secretary William Macomber
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. Cotter 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
36 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
5 catalogue titles in drama, 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
The Post
as Under Secretary William Macomber
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
X2
as President McKenna
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Post
as Under Secretary William Macomber
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Time of Death
as Pat
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
X2
as President McKenna
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
X2
as President McKenna
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Friends with Kids
as Phil Fryman
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
K-9
as Gilliam
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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