Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#35093
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Eric Davis represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 27 years in, and Eric is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Eric Davis appears in 11 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Eric. Midway 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, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for tv movie, thriller, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Stéphane Lafleur, Roland Emmerich, Darren Aronofsky and others, Eric Davis 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.
Midway (2019) as Captain Miles Browning · mother! (2017) as Bumbler · The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet (2013) as Towncar Driver
Career snapshot
Ranked #35093 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
11
1999–2026
Career length
27 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.1
Midway
Average Nutevio score
5.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.2
Timescape: Back to the Dinosaurs
Most frequent director
Stéphane Lafleur
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Stéphane Lafleur
Most common genre
Drama
8 titles
Average runtime
1h 41m
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
1990s
6.8 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. The Bone Collector — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
6.8
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
6.8
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. The Bone Collector.
Most productive era
2010s
5 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 | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.81 film | 6.74 films | 4.23 films |
| Action | — | 6.71 film | — |
| Thriller | 6.81 film | 6.71 film | 0.01 film |
| Comedy | — | 6.71 film | 6.32 films |
| Crime | 6.81 film | 6.71 film | — |
| Horror | — | 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 Cop in Apartment.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2017mother!
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.
Most recent film
The current state of the argument, as Sheriff Reeves.
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 Captain Miles Browning
Directed by Roland Emmerich
as Bumbler
Directed by Darren Aronofsky
as John
Directed by Unknown
as Towncar Driver
Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet
as Cop in Apartment
Directed by Phillip Noyce
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
Captain Miles Browning
Midway (2019)
Performance score7.0
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Captain Miles Browning gives Eric Davis a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Bumbler
mother! (2017)
Performance score7.0
mother! asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Bumbler is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
John
Timescape: Back to the Dinosaurs (2022)
Performance score6.8
Timescape: Back to the Dinosaurs asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. John is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Towncar Driver
The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet (2013)
Performance score6.7
The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Towncar Driver 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 Captain Miles Browning
Start here. Midway is the clearest statement of what Eric Davis does — accessible, 138 minutes, and rated 7.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Eric 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.
The Bone Collector (1999)
Keeps the drama register of Midway but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet (2013)
Keeps the drama register of The Bone Collector but asks for a colder reading of it.
mother! (2017)
Keeps the drama register of The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet but asks for a colder reading of it.
Timescape: Back to the Dinosaurs (2022)
A deliberate change of key after mother! — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Phillip Noyce
Director
1 film together
Notably The Bone Collector
Walter Salles
Director
1 film together
Notably On the Road
Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Director
1 film together
Notably The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet
Dean Parisot
Director
1 film together
Notably RED 2
Darren Aronofsky
Director
1 film together
Notably mother!
Roland Emmerich
Director
1 film together
Notably Midway
Stéphane Lafleur
Director
1 film together
Notably Viking
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Roland Emmerich
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
MidwayDarren Aronofsky
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
mother!Jean-Pierre Jeunet
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 Young and Prodigious T.S. SpivetPhillip Noyce
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 Bone CollectorDean Parisot
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
RED 2Stéphane Lafleur
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
VikingWalter Salles
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
On the RoadSix 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
Midway
as Captain Miles Browning
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet
as Towncar Driver
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
mother!
as Bumbler
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
RED 2
as MI6 Chief Security Officer
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Midway
as Captain Miles Browning
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. Eric Davis 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
8 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
The Bone Collector
as Cop in Apartment
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Bone Collector
as Cop in Apartment
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet
as Towncar Driver
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Bone Collector
as Cop in Apartment
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
RED 2
as MI6 Chief Security Officer
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
RED 2
as MI6 Chief Security Officer
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Midway
as Captain Miles Browning
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Viking
as Le vrai John Shepard
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
Community
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Reference
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