Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#18720
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
David Joseph Martinez represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 30 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 Joseph Martinez appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without David. Now You See Me is the clearest case: a film rated 7.3 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, screen presence. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for action, crime, thriller. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Louis Leterrier, Mikael Håfström, Antoine Fuqua and others, David Joseph Martinez 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.
Now You See Me (2013) as F.B.I. Driver (uncredited) · X-Men: First Class (2011) as Cuban General #1 (uncredited) · The System (2022) as Warden Carlos
Career snapshot
Ranked #18720 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
1992–2022
Career length
30 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.3
Now You See Me
Average Nutevio score
6.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
Now You See Me
Most frequent director
Louis Leterrier
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Louis Leterrier
Most common genre
Action
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 55m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.0
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
6.7
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
2020s
7.1 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. The System — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
7.1
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
7.1
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1990s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Bodyguard.
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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.81 film | 6.21 film | — | — |
| Action | 6.81 film | — | 6.75 films | 7.11 film |
| Thriller | — | — | 6.66 films | 7.11 film |
| Crime | — | 6.21 film | 6.72 films | 7.11 film |
| Romance | 6.81 film | — | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1992The Bodyguard
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Janitor (uncredited).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
7.3 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
2022The System
The current state of the argument, as Warden Carlos.
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.
10 of 10 films
as F.B.I. Driver (uncredited)
Directed by Louis Leterrier
as Cuban General #1 (uncredited)
Directed by Matthew Vaughn
as Warden Carlos
Directed by Unknown
as Old Dale
Directed by Rian Johnson
as Janitor (uncredited)
Directed by Mick Jackson
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
F.B.I. Driver (uncredited)
Now You See Me (2013)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. F.B.I. Driver (uncredited) gives David Joseph Martinez a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Cuban General #1 (uncredited)
X-Men: First Class (2011)
Performance score7.2
X-Men: First Class asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Cuban General #1 (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Warden Carlos
The System (2022)
Performance score7.0
The System asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Warden Carlos is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Old Dale
Looper (2012)
Performance score6.8
Looper asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Old Dale 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 F.B.I. Driver (uncredited)
Start here. Now You See Me is the clearest statement of what David Joseph Martinez does — accessible, 116 minutes, and rated 7.3 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.
The Bodyguard (1992)
A deliberate change of key after Now You See Me — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
X-Men: First Class (2011)
Keeps the action register of The Bodyguard but asks for a colder reading of it.
Looper (2012)
Keeps the action register of X-Men: First Class but asks for a colder reading of it.
The System (2022)
Keeps the action register of Looper but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Mick Jackson
Director
1 film together
Notably The Bodyguard
Werner Herzog
Director
1 film together
Notably Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
Sylvester Stallone
Director
1 film together
Notably The Expendables
Matthew Vaughn
Director
1 film together
Notably X-Men: First Class
Rian Johnson
Director
1 film together
Notably Looper
Andrew Dominik
Director
1 film together
Notably Killing Them Softly
Antoine Fuqua
Director
1 film together
Notably Olympus Has Fallen
Mikael Håfström
Director
1 film together
Notably Escape Plan
Louis Leterrier
Director
1 film together
Notably Now You See Me
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Louis Leterrier
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Now You See MeMatthew Vaughn
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
X-Men: First ClassRian Johnson
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
LooperMick Jackson
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The BodyguardMikael Håfström
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Escape PlanAntoine Fuqua
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Olympus Has FallenSylvester Stallone
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The ExpendablesWerner Herzog
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New OrleansAndrew Dominik
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Killing Them SoftlySix 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
X-Men: First Class
as Cuban General #1 (uncredited)
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 Bodyguard
as Janitor (uncredited)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
X-Men: First Class
as Cuban General #1 (uncredited)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
X-Men: First Class
as Cuban General #1 (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Now You See Me
as F.B.I. Driver (uncredited)
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 Joseph Martinez 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
30 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.
Action Legend
Awarded
7 catalogue titles in action, 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
X-Men: First Class
as Cuban General #1 (uncredited)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Now You See Me
as F.B.I. Driver (uncredited)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Bodyguard
as Janitor (uncredited)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Now You See Me
as F.B.I. Driver (uncredited)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
X-Men: First Class
as Cuban General #1 (uncredited)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
X-Men: First Class
as Cuban General #1 (uncredited)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Bodyguard
as Janitor (uncredited)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Bodyguard
as Janitor (uncredited)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Morgan Freeman
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Elliot Page
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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