Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3689
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
David Hewlett represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 36 years in, and David is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
David Hewlett appears in 13 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without David. Rise of the Planet of the Apes is the clearest case: a film rated 7.4 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, science fiction, thriller. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Guillermo del Toro, Jerry Ciccoritti, Roland Emmerich and others, David Hewlett 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.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) as Douglas Hunsiker · Midway (2019) as Husband Kimmel · Nightmare Alley (2021) as Dr. Elrood
Career snapshot
Ranked #3689 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
13
1988–2024
Career length
36 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.4
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Most frequent director
Vincenzo Natali
3 films together
Longest collaboration
3×
With Vincenzo Natali
Most common genre
Thriller
8 titles
Average runtime
1h 46m
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
6.5
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
1990s
6.9 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Cube — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
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
1990s
6.8
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. Pin : A Plastic Nightmare.
Most productive era
2010s
7 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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | — | — | 7.13 films | 5.32 films |
| Action | — | — | — | 6.42 films | 5.71 film |
| Thriller | 6.81 film | 6.91 film | 6.61 film | 6.53 films | 6.32 films |
| Comedy | — | — | — | 5.01 film | — |
| Crime | — | — | — | 6.12 films | 6.91 film |
| Romance | — | — | — | 5.82 films | — |
| Horror | 6.81 film | — | — | 5.91 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Career peak
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Leon. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
2011Rise of the Planet of the Apes
7.4 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
2024Levels
The current state of the argument, as Oliver.
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.
13 of 13 films
as Douglas Hunsiker
Directed by Rupert Wyatt
as Worth
Directed by Vincenzo Natali
as Husband Kimmel
Directed by Roland Emmerich
as Mr. Jacobs
Directed by Jerry Ciccoritti
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
Douglas Hunsiker
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Douglas Hunsiker gives David Hewlett a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Leon
Pin : A Plastic Nightmare (1988)
Performance score7.2
Pin : A Plastic Nightmare asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Leon is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Worth
Cube (1998)
Performance score7.1
Cube asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Worth is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Husband Kimmel
Midway (2019)
Performance score7.0
Midway asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Husband Kimmel 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 Douglas Hunsiker
Start here. Rise of the Planet of the Apes is the clearest statement of what David Hewlett does — accessible, 105 minutes, and rated 7.4 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet David 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.
Pin : A Plastic Nightmare (1988)
Keeps the thriller register of Rise of the Planet of the Apes but asks for a colder reading of it.
Cube (1998)
Keeps the thriller register of Pin : A Plastic Nightmare but asks for a colder reading of it.
Midway (2019)
A deliberate change of key after Cube — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Turkey Drop (2019)
A deliberate change of key after Midway — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Vincenzo Natali
Director
3 films together
Notably Cube
Jerry Ciccoritti
Director
2 films together
Notably Turkey Drop
Sandor Stern
Director
1 film together
Notably Pin : A Plastic Nightmare
Larysa Kondracki
Director
1 film together
Notably The Whistleblower
Rupert Wyatt
Director
1 film together
Notably Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Roland Emmerich
Director
1 film together
Notably Midway
Guillermo del Toro
Director
1 film together
Notably Nightmare Alley
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Vincenzo Natali
Director
3 films together · 6.5 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
CubeJerry Ciccoritti
Director
2 films together · 5.2 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Turkey DropRupert Wyatt
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Rise of the Planet of the ApesRoland Emmerich
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
MidwayGuillermo del Toro
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Nightmare AlleySandor Stern
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Pin : A Plastic NightmareLarysa Kondracki
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 WhistleblowerSix 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
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
as Douglas Hunsiker
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Turkey Drop
as Mr. Jacobs
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
as Douglas Hunsiker
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Midway
as Husband Kimmel
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
as Douglas Hunsiker
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. David Hewlett 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.
Thriller Legend
Awarded
8 catalogue titles in thriller, 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
Cube
as Worth
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
as Douglas Hunsiker
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Turkey Drop
as Mr. Jacobs
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Cube
as Worth
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
as Douglas Hunsiker
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
as Douglas Hunsiker
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Whistleblower
as Fred Murray
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Cube
as Worth
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Reference
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