Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#48812
of 909177 performers
Top 10%
Dicken Ashworth represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 27 years in, and Dicken is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Dicken Ashworth appears in 4 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Dicken. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is the clearest case: a film rated 7.1 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, drama. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for comedy, adventure, family. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Nick Park, Peter Yates, Roman Polanski and others, Dicken Ashworth 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.
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) as Mr. Mulch (voice) · Tess (1979) as Farmer Groby · Force 10 from Navarone (1978) as Nolan
Career snapshot
Ranked #48812 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
4
1978–2005
Career length
27 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.1
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.1
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Most frequent director
Nick Park
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Nick Park
Most common genre
Adventure
3 titles
Average runtime
2h 3m
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
2000s
7.1 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
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
2000s
7.1
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1970s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Tess, Force 10 from Navarone.
Most productive era
1970s
2 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 | 1970s | 1980s | 2000s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.52 films | — | — |
| Action | — | 6.01 film | — |
| Comedy | — | — | 7.11 film |
| Romance | 6.81 film | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Nolan.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2005Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
7.1 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. The current state of the argument, as Mr. Mulch (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.
4 of 4 films
as Mr. Mulch (voice)
Directed by Nick Park
as Farmer Groby
Directed by Roman Polanski
as Bardolph
Directed by Peter Yates
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
Mr. Mulch (voice)
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)
Performance score7.0
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Mr. Mulch (voice) gives Dicken Ashworth a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Farmer Groby
Tess (1979)
Performance score6.7
Tess asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Farmer Groby is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Bardolph
Krull (1983)
Performance score6.5
Krull asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Bardolph is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Nolan
Force 10 from Navarone (1978)
Performance score6.5
Force 10 from Navarone asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Nolan 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. Mulch (voice)
Start here. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is the clearest statement of what Dicken Ashworth does — accessible, 85 minutes, and rated 7.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Dicken 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.
Force 10 from Navarone (1978)
Keeps the adventure register of Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit but asks for a colder reading of it.
Tess (1979)
Keeps the drama register of Force 10 from Navarone but asks for a colder reading of it.
Krull (1983)
A deliberate change of key after Tess — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Guy Hamilton
Director
1 film together
Notably Force 10 from Navarone
Roman Polanski
Director
1 film together
Notably Tess
Peter Yates
Director
1 film together
Notably Krull
Nick Park
Director
1 film together
Notably Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Nick Park
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-RabbitRoman Polanski
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
TessGuy Hamilton
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Force 10 from NavaronePeter Yates
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
KrullSix 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
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
as Mr. Mulch (voice)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Tess
as Farmer Groby
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
as Mr. Mulch (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Tess
as Farmer Groby
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
as Mr. Mulch (voice)
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. Dicken Ashworth 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.
Adventure Legend
Awarded
3 catalogue titles in adventure, 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
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
as Mr. Mulch (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
as Mr. Mulch (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Tess
as Farmer Groby
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Krull
as Bardolph
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
as Mr. Mulch (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Krull
as Bardolph
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
as Mr. Mulch (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Force 10 from Navarone
as Nolan
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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Tom Wilkinson
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Elliot Page
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Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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