Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#4629
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
David Ury works on versatility 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.
David Ury appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without David. Babylon 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, 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 Damien Chazelle, Cathy Yan, Miranda July and others, David Ury 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.
Babylon (2022) as Fan (Autograph) · Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020) as Sleazy Breeder · Shoot 'Em Up (2007) as Diner Holdup Leader
Career snapshot
Ranked #4629 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
2004–2025
Career length
21 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.3
Babylon
Average Nutevio score
6.1
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
Babylon
Most frequent director
Damien Chazelle
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Damien Chazelle
Most common genre
Thriller
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 53m
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
2020s
6.2 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Time of Death, Violent Ends, Babylon — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
6.2
Across 6 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
6.2
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. Shoot 'Em Up, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, Paparazzi.
Most productive era
2020s
6 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 | 5.31 film | — | 6.24 films |
| Action | 6.13 films | 5.81 film | 6.91 film |
| Thriller | 5.92 films | 5.81 film | 5.63 films |
| Comedy | 6.51 film | — | 6.23 films |
| Crime | 6.51 film | — | 6.53 films |
| Horror | — | 5.81 film | 5.61 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2004Paparazzi
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Fan.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2022Babylon
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
2025Violent Ends
The current state of the argument, as Lou Byers.
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 Fan (Autograph)
Directed by Damien Chazelle
as Meeks
Directed by Unknown
as Lou Byers
Directed by Unknown
as Bill
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
Fan (Autograph)
Babylon (2022)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Fan (Autograph) gives David Ury a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Sleazy Breeder
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)
Performance score6.8
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Sleazy Breeder is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Meeks
Time of Death (2025)
Performance score6.5
Time of Death asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Meeks is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Lou Byers
Violent Ends (2025)
Performance score6.5
Violent Ends asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Lou Byers 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 Fan (Autograph)
Start here. Babylon is the clearest statement of what David Ury does — accessible, 189 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.
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)
A deliberate change of key after Babylon — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
1-800-Hot-Nite (2022)
A deliberate change of key after Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Time of Death (2025)
Same director as 1-800-Hot-Nite, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Violent Ends (2025)
Same director as Time of Death, 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.
Paul Abascal
Director
1 film together
Notably Paparazzi
Jon Turteltaub
Director
1 film together
Notably National Treasure: Book of Secrets
Rob Zombie
Director
1 film together
Notably 3 from Hell
Miranda July
Director
1 film together
Notably Kajillionaire
Cathy Yan
Director
1 film together
Notably Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)
Damien Chazelle
Director
1 film together
Notably Babylon
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Damien Chazelle
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BabylonCathy Yan
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)Jon Turteltaub
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
National Treasure: Book of SecretsMiranda July
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
KajillionaireRob Zombie
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
3 from HellPaul Abascal
Director
1 film together · 5.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
PaparazziSix 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
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)
as Sleazy Breeder
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Babylon
as Fan (Autograph)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Babylon
as Fan (Autograph)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Babylon
as Fan (Autograph)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Babylon
as Fan (Autograph)
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 Ury 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
21 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
Babylon
as Fan (Autograph)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)
as Sleazy Breeder
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Paparazzi
as Fan
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Time of Death
as Meeks
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)
as Sleazy Breeder
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
3 from Hell
as Travis O'Rourke
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Kajillionaire
as Minimart Cashier
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Violent Ends
as Lou Byers
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Christian Bale
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Have your say
Community
Which David Ury 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
