Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#17136
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
David Lawrence Brown represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 26 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 Lawrence Brown appears in 12 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without David. Ordinary Angels is the clearest case: a film rated 7.7 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, crime, thriller. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Ben Wheatley, Timo Tjahjanto, Jon Gunn and others, David Lawrence Brown 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.
Ordinary Angels (2024) as Bob Green · Normal (2026) as Dr. Walter Vilie · X-Men (2000) as Lead Cop
Career snapshot
Ranked #17136 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
12
2000–2026
Career length
26 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.7
Ordinary Angels
Average Nutevio score
6.0
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.7
Ordinary Angels
Most frequent director
Ben Wheatley
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Ben Wheatley
Most common genre
Thriller
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 30m
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
6.3
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
6.5 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Death to Smoochy, X-Men — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.5
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.5
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. Death to Smoochy, X-Men.
Most productive era
2020s
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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 5.91 film | 5.51 film | 7.71 film |
| Action | 7.01 film | — | 4.63 films |
| Thriller | 5.91 film | 6.51 film | 6.74 films |
| Comedy | 5.91 film | — | 3.52 films |
| Crime | 5.91 film | — | 7.01 film |
| Romance | — | — | 6.71 film |
| Horror | — | 5.41 film | 6.52 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2000X-Men
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Lead Cop.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2024Ordinary Angels
7.7 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
2026Violent Night 2
The current state of the argument.
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.
12 of 12 films
as Dr. Walter Vilie
Directed by Ben Wheatley
as Lead Cop
Directed by Bryan Singer
as Government Agent
Directed by Timo Tjahjanto
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
Bob Green
Ordinary Angels (2024)
Performance score7.5
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Bob Green gives David Lawrence Brown a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Dr. Walter Vilie
Normal (2026)
Performance score6.9
Normal asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Dr. Walter Vilie is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Lead Cop
X-Men (2000)
Performance score6.9
X-Men asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Lead Cop is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Government Agent
Nobody 2 (2025)
Performance score6.8
Nobody 2 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Government Agent 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 Bob Green
Start here. Ordinary Angels is the clearest statement of what David Lawrence Brown does — accessible, 118 minutes, and rated 7.7 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.
X-Men (2000)
A deliberate change of key after Ordinary Angels — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Nobody 2 (2025)
Keeps the action register of X-Men but asks for a colder reading of it.
Silent Night, Deadly Night (2025)
Keeps the thriller register of Nobody 2 but asks for a colder reading of it.
Normal (2026)
Keeps the thriller register of Silent Night, Deadly Night but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Bryan Singer
Director
1 film together
Notably X-Men
Danny DeVito
Director
1 film together
Notably Death to Smoochy
Scott Speer
Director
1 film together
Notably I Still See You
Tibor Takács
Director
1 film together
Notably The Secret Ingredient
Jon Gunn
Director
1 film together
Notably Ordinary Angels
Timo Tjahjanto
Director
1 film together
Notably Nobody 2
Ben Wheatley
Director
1 film together
Notably Normal
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Jon Gunn
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Ordinary AngelsBen Wheatley
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
NormalBryan 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
X-MenTimo Tjahjanto
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Nobody 2Tibor Takács
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 Secret IngredientScott Speer
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
I Still See YouDanny DeVito
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Death to SmoochySix 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
Ordinary Angels
as Bob Green
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
J.T. LeRoy
as Bruce
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Ordinary Angels
as Bob Green
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Death to Smoochy
as McCall
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Ordinary Angels
as Bob Green
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 Lawrence Brown 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
26 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
6 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
I Still See You
as Principal Pescatelli
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Normal
as Dr. Walter Vilie
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
J.T. LeRoy
as Bruce
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
I Still See You
as Principal Pescatelli
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
X-Men
as Lead Cop
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
X-Men
as Lead Cop
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Death to Smoochy
as McCall
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
I Still See You
as Principal Pescatelli
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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