Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#4135
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
David Walliams represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 27 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 Walliams appears in 19 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without David. From Roger Moore with Love is the clearest case: a film rated 8.0 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 fantasy, adventure, documentary. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Jeffrey Walker, Tal Granit, Dan Zeff and others, David Walliams 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.
From Roger Moore with Love (2024) as Self · I Am Martin Parr (2024) as Self · Shaun of the Dead (2004) as News Reporter (voice) (uncredited)
Career snapshot
Ranked #4135 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
19
1999–2026
Career length
27 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.0
From Roger Moore with Love
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.0
From Roger Moore with Love
Most frequent director
Jeffrey Walker
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Jeffrey Walker
Most common genre
Comedy
9 titles
Average runtime
1h 24m
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
2000s
7.2 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Stardust, Shaun of the Dead — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
7.2
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
7.2
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. Plunkett & Macleane.
Most productive era
2020s
9 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 | 6.21 film | — | 6.41 film | 6.22 films |
| Action | 6.21 film | — | 6.91 film | 5.81 film |
| Comedy | 6.21 film | 7.61 film | 6.04 films | 6.73 films |
| Crime | — | — | 6.31 film | 5.81 film |
| Romance | — | 7.31 film | 6.41 film | — |
| Horror | — | 7.61 film | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Viscount Bilston.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2024From Roger Moore with Love
8.0 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
2026Fing!
The current state of the argument, as Headmaster.
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.
19 of 19 films
as News Reporter (voice) (uncredited)
Directed by Edgar Wright
as The Troll
Directed by Dan Zeff
as Sextus
Directed by Matthew Vaughn
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
Self
From Roger Moore with Love (2024)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Self gives David Walliams a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Self
I Am Martin Parr (2024)
Performance score7.4
I Am Martin Parr asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
News Reporter (voice) (uncredited)
Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Performance score7.4
Shaun of the Dead asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. News Reporter (voice) (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
The Troll
Hansel & Gretel: After Ever After (2021)
Performance score7.2
Hansel & Gretel: After Ever After asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. The Troll 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 Self
Start here. From Roger Moore with Love is the clearest statement of what David Walliams does — accessible, 79 minutes, and rated 8.0 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.
Shaun of the Dead (2004)
A deliberate change of key after From Roger Moore with Love — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Stardust (2007)
A deliberate change of key after Shaun of the Dead — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Hansel & Gretel: After Ever After (2021)
Keeps the fantasy register of Stardust but asks for a colder reading of it.
I Am Martin Parr (2024)
A deliberate change of key after Hansel & Gretel: After Ever After — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Edgar Wright
Director
1 film together
Notably Shaun of the Dead
Matthew Vaughn
Director
1 film together
Notably Stardust
Andrew Adamson
Director
1 film together
Notably The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Jay Roach
Director
1 film together
Notably Dinner for Schmucks
Mike Newell
Director
1 film together
Notably Great Expectations
Kyle Newacheck
Director
1 film together
Notably Murder Mystery
Chris Butler
Director
1 film together
Notably Missing Link
Matt Lipsey
Director
1 film together
Notably Cinderella: A Comic Relief Pantomime for Christmas
Dan Zeff
Director
1 film together
Notably Hansel & Gretel: After Ever After
Tal Granit
Director
1 film together
Notably My Happy Ending
Jeffrey Walker
Director
1 film together
Notably Fing!
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Edgar Wright
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Shaun of the DeadMatthew 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
StardustDan Zeff
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hansel & Gretel: After Ever AfterChris Butler
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Missing LinkAndrew Adamson
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 Chronicles of Narnia: Prince CaspianTal Granit
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
My Happy EndingMike Newell
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Great ExpectationsMatt Lipsey
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Cinderella: A Comic Relief Pantomime for ChristmasKyle Newacheck
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Murder MysteryJay Roach
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Dinner for SchmucksJeffrey Walker
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fing!Six 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
Stardust
as Sextus
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Stardust
as Sextus
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
From Roger Moore with Love
as Self
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Shaun of the Dead
as News Reporter (voice) (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
From Roger Moore with Love
as Self
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 Walliams 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
27 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.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
9 catalogue titles in comedy, 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
From Roger Moore with Love
as Self
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Shaun of the Dead
as News Reporter (voice) (uncredited)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Great Expectations
as Mr. Pumblechook
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Murder Mystery
as Tobey Quince
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Missing Link
as Mr. Lemuel Lint (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Missing Link
as Mr. Lemuel Lint (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Missing Link
as Mr. Lemuel Lint (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
as Bulgy Bear (voice)
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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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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