Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#83434
of 909177 performers
Top 10%
Donald Meek 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.
Donald Meek appears in 11 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Donald. Stagecoach 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 western, drama, history. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Fritz Lang, Henry King, John Ford and others, Donald Meek 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.
Stagecoach (1939) as Samuel Peacock · You Can't Take It with You (1938) as Poppins · Captain Blood (1935) as Dr. Whacker
Career snapshot
Ranked #83434 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
11
1934–1940
Career length
6 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.3
Stagecoach
Average Nutevio score
6.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.6
Stagecoach
Most frequent director
John Ford
3 films together
Longest collaboration
3×
With John Ford
Most common genre
Romance
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 37m
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
1930s
6.7 average MV
The 1930s are where the work and the material meet. Jesse James, Stagecoach, Young Mr. Lincoln — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1930s
6.7
Across 10 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1930s
6.9
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1930s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Jesse James, Stagecoach, Young Mr. Lincoln.
Most productive era
1930s
10 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 | 1930s | 1940s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.73 films | — |
| Comedy | 6.82 films | — |
| Crime | 6.61 film | — |
| Romance | 6.84 films | — |
| Horror | 6.31 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1934The Merry Widow
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Valet.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1939Stagecoach
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
The current state of the argument, as McCoy.
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.
11 of 11 films
as Samuel Peacock
Directed by John Ford
as Dr. Whacker
Directed by Michael Curtiz
as Prosecutor John Felder
Directed by John Ford
as Peter Mulligan
Directed by John Ford
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
Samuel Peacock
Stagecoach (1939)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Samuel Peacock gives Donald Meek a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Poppins
You Can't Take It with You (1938)
Performance score7.0
You Can't Take It with You asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Poppins is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Dr. Whacker
Captain Blood (1935)
Performance score6.8
Captain Blood asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Dr. Whacker is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Prosecutor John Felder
Young Mr. Lincoln (1939)
Performance score6.7
Young Mr. Lincoln asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Prosecutor John Felder 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 Samuel Peacock
Start here. Stagecoach is the clearest statement of what Donald Meek does — accessible, 96 minutes, and rated 7.3 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Donald 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.
Captain Blood (1935)
A deliberate change of key after Stagecoach — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Informer (1935)
A deliberate change of key after Captain Blood — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
You Can't Take It with You (1938)
A deliberate change of key after The Informer — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Young Mr. Lincoln (1939)
A deliberate change of key after You Can't Take It with You — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
John Ford
Director
3 films together
Notably Stagecoach
Ernst Lubitsch
Director
1 film together
Notably The Merry Widow
Henry Hathaway
Director
1 film together
Notably Peter Ibbetson
Tod Browning
Director
1 film together
Notably Mark of the Vampire
Michael Curtiz
Director
1 film together
Notably Captain Blood
Frank Capra
Director
1 film together
Notably You Can't Take It with You
Norman Taurog
Director
1 film together
Notably The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Henry King
Director
1 film together
Notably Jesse James
Fritz Lang
Director
1 film together
Notably The Return of Frank James
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
John Ford
Director
3 films together · 6.9 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
StagecoachFrank Capra
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
You Can't Take It with YouMichael Curtiz
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Captain BloodHenry Hathaway
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Peter IbbetsonErnst Lubitsch
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Merry WidowHenry King
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Jesse JamesNorman Taurog
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Adventures of Tom SawyerFritz Lang
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 Return of Frank JamesTod Browning
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mark of the VampireSix 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
You Can't Take It with You
as Poppins
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Captain Blood
as Dr. Whacker
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Stagecoach
as Samuel Peacock
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Captain Blood
as Dr. Whacker
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Stagecoach
as Samuel Peacock
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. Donald Meek 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.
Romance Legend
Awarded
4 catalogue titles in romance, 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
Stagecoach
as Samuel Peacock
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Mark of the Vampire
as Dr. Doskil
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Young Mr. Lincoln
as Prosecutor John Felder
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Mark of the Vampire
as Dr. Doskil
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Stagecoach
as Samuel Peacock
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Stagecoach
as Samuel Peacock
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Merry Widow
as Valet
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Mark of the Vampire
as Dr. Doskil
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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