Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#6565
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Dennis Boutsikaris represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 37 years in, and Dennis is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Dennis Boutsikaris appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Dennis. Freeheld is the clearest case: a film rated 7.2 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, quiet performance, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for thriller, romance, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Santino Fontana, Justine Bateman, Jodie Foster and others, Dennis Boutsikaris 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.
Freeheld (2015) as Pat Gerry · Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game (2023) as Mr. Sharpe · Violet (2021) as Tom Gaines
Career snapshot
Ranked #6565 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
1987–2024
Career length
37 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.2
Freeheld
Average Nutevio score
5.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.2
Freeheld
Most frequent director
Santino Fontana
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Santino Fontana
Most common genre
Drama
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 40m
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
2010s
6.6 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Money Monster, Freeheld, The Bourne Legacy — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.6
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.6
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. The Dream Team, *batteries not included.
Most productive era
2010s
3 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 | — | 6.41 film | 6.21 film | 6.82 films | 6.92 films |
| Action | — | — | — | 6.31 film | — |
| Thriller | 6.11 film | — | — | 6.32 films | 0.01 film |
| Comedy | 6.42 films | 6.41 film | — | — | 7.11 film |
| Crime | 6.11 film | — | — | — | — |
| Romance | — | — | — | 7.21 film | 7.11 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Mason Baylor.
Highest rated performance
2015Freeheld
7.2 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
2023Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2024Death Wish
The current state of the argument, as Reporter 1 (voice).
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 Mr. Sharpe
Directed by Unknown
as Pat Gerry
Directed by Peter Sollett
as Mason Baylor
Directed by Matthew Robbins
as Reporter 1 (voice)
Directed by Santino Fontana
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
Mr. Sharpe
Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game (2023)
Performance score7.5
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Mr. Sharpe gives Dennis Boutsikaris a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Pat Gerry
Freeheld (2015)
Performance score7.1
Freeheld asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Pat Gerry is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Tom Gaines
Violet (2021)
Performance score6.9
Violet asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Tom Gaines is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Mason Baylor
*batteries not included (1987)
Performance score6.9
*batteries not included asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mason Baylor 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 Mr. Sharpe
Start here. Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game is the clearest statement of what Dennis Boutsikaris does — accessible, 92 minutes, and rated 7.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Dennis 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.
*batteries not included (1987)
Keeps the comedy register of Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game but asks for a colder reading of it.
Freeheld (2015)
A deliberate change of key after *batteries not included — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Violet (2021)
Keeps the drama register of Freeheld but asks for a colder reading of it.
Death Wish (2024)
A deliberate change of key after Violet — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Matthew Robbins
Director
1 film together
Notably *batteries not included
Herbert Ross
Director
1 film together
Notably Boys on the Side
Oliver Stone
Director
1 film together
Notably W.
Tony Gilroy
Director
1 film together
Notably The Bourne Legacy
Peter Sollett
Director
1 film together
Notably Freeheld
Jodie Foster
Director
1 film together
Notably Money Monster
Justine Bateman
Director
1 film together
Notably Violet
Santino Fontana
Director
1 film together
Notably Death Wish
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Peter Sollett
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
FreeheldJustine Bateman
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
VioletMatthew Robbins
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
*batteries not includedJodie Foster
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Money MonsterHerbert Ross
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Boys on the SideTony Gilroy
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 Bourne LegacyOliver Stone
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
W.Santino Fontana
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Death WishSix 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
Freeheld
as Pat Gerry
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Freeheld
as Pat Gerry
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Freeheld
as Pat Gerry
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Freeheld
as Pat Gerry
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game
as Mr. Sharpe
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. Dennis Boutsikaris 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
37 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
6 catalogue titles in drama, 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
Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game
as Mr. Sharpe
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Bourne Legacy
as Ward
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game
as Mr. Sharpe
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Dream Team
as Dr. Weitzman
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Bourne Legacy
as Ward
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Bourne Legacy
as Ward
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game
as Mr. Sharpe
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Bourne Legacy
as Ward
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
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Reference
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