Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#192819
of 909177 performers
Top 25%
D.A. Clarke-Smith 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.
D.A. Clarke-Smith appears in 3 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without D.A.. Quo Vadis is the clearest case: a film rated 6.9 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, transformation, screen presence. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, drama, history. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Mervyn LeRoy, Alfred Hitchcock, T. Hayes Hunter, D.A. Clarke-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.
Quo Vadis (1951) as Phaon · The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) as Binstead · The Ghoul (1933) as Mahmoud
Career snapshot
Ranked #192819 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
3
1933–1951
Career length
18 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.9
Quo Vadis
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.1
Quo Vadis
Most frequent director
Mervyn LeRoy
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Mervyn LeRoy
Most common genre
Mystery
2 titles
Average runtime
1h 49m
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
1950s
6.9 average MV
The 1950s are where the work and the material meet. Quo Vadis — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1950s
6.9
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1950s
7.1
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1930s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Ghoul.
Most productive era
1930s
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 | 1930s | 1950s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.91 film |
| Thriller | 6.51 film | — |
| Romance | — | 6.91 film |
| Horror | 6.01 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1933The Ghoul
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Mahmoud.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
1951Quo Vadis
6.9 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 Phaon.
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 Phaon
Directed by Mervyn LeRoy
as Binstead
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
as Mahmoud
Directed by T. Hayes Hunter
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
Phaon
Quo Vadis (1951)
Performance score6.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Phaon gives D.A. Clarke-Smith a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Binstead
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
Performance score6.5
The Man Who Knew Too Much asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Binstead is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Mahmoud
The Ghoul (1933)
Performance score6.5
The Ghoul asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mahmoud 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 Phaon
Start here. Quo Vadis is the clearest statement of what D.A. Clarke-Smith does — accessible, 174 minutes, and rated 6.9 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet D.A. 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 Ghoul (1933)
A deliberate change of key after Quo Vadis — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
Keeps the mystery register of The Ghoul 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.
Mervyn LeRoy
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Quo VadisAlfred Hitchcock
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Man Who Knew Too MuchT. Hayes Hunter
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The GhoulSix 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
Quo Vadis
as Phaon
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Quo Vadis
as Phaon
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Quo Vadis
as Phaon
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Quo Vadis
as Phaon
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Quo Vadis
as Phaon
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. D.A. Clarke-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.
Mystery Legend
Awarded
2 catalogue titles in mystery, 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 Man Who Knew Too Much
as Binstead
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Man Who Knew Too Much
as Binstead
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Quo Vadis
as Phaon
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Man Who Knew Too Much
as Binstead
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Quo Vadis
as Phaon
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Quo Vadis
as Phaon
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Quo Vadis
as Phaon
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Ghoul
as Mahmoud
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Robert Downey Jr.
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
David Dastmalchian
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Have your say
Community
Which D.A. Clarke-Smith 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
