Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#18782
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Frederick Worlock 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.
Frederick Worlock appears in 17 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Frederick. Spartacus is the clearest case: a film rated 7.4 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 comedy, adventure, family. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Clyde Geronimi, Stanley Kubrick, Victor Fleming and others, Frederick Worlock 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.
Spartacus (1960) as Laelius · One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) as Horace / Inspector Craven (voice) · How Green Was My Valley (1941) as Dr. Richards
Career snapshot
Ranked #18782 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
17
1940–1961
Career length
21 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.4
Spartacus
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.5
Spartacus
Most frequent director
Roy William Neill
3 films together
Longest collaboration
3×
With Roy William Neill
Most common genre
Adventure
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 43m
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
1960s
7.3 average MV
The 1960s are where the work and the material meet. One Hundred and One Dalmatians, Spartacus — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1960s
7.3
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1960s
7.4
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1940s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Joan of Arc, She-Wolf of London, Terror by Night.
Most productive era
1940s
15 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 | 1940s | 1960s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.66 films | 7.41 film |
| Thriller | 6.46 films | — |
| Comedy | — | 7.31 film |
| Crime | 6.53 films | — |
| Romance | 6.65 films | — |
| Horror | 6.33 films | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Sir William Johnson.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1960Spartacus
7.4 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
1961One Hundred and One Dalmatians
The current state of the argument, as Horace / Inspector Craven (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.
17 of 17 films
as Horace / Inspector Craven (voice)
Directed by Clyde Geronimi
as Laelius
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
as Prof. William Kilbane
Directed by Roy William Neill
as Radio Newscaster (voice) (uncredited)
Directed by Zoltan Korda
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
Horace / Inspector Craven (voice)
One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Horace / Inspector Craven (voice) gives Frederick Worlock a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Laelius
Spartacus (1960)
Performance score7.2
Spartacus asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Laelius is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Dr. Richards
How Green Was My Valley (1941)
Performance score6.9
How Green Was My Valley asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Dr. Richards is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Prof. William Kilbane
Terror by Night (1946)
Performance score6.7
Terror by Night asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Prof. William Kilbane 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 Horace / Inspector Craven (voice)
Start here. One Hundred and One Dalmatians is the clearest statement of what Frederick Worlock does — accessible, 79 minutes, and rated 7.3 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Frederick 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.
How Green Was My Valley (1941)
A deliberate change of key after One Hundred and One Dalmatians — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Sahara (1943)
A deliberate change of key after How Green Was My Valley — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Terror by Night (1946)
A deliberate change of key after Sahara — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Spartacus (1960)
A deliberate change of key after Terror by Night — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Roy William Neill
Director
3 films together
Notably Terror by Night
Victor Fleming
Director
2 films together
Notably Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Michael Curtiz
Director
1 film together
Notably The Sea Hawk
King Vidor
Director
1 film together
Notably Northwest Passage
John Ford
Director
1 film together
Notably How Green Was My Valley
Fritz Lang
Director
1 film together
Notably Man Hunt
Henry King
Director
1 film together
Notably The Black Swan
Robert Stevenson
Director
1 film together
Notably Jane Eyre
Zoltan Korda
Director
1 film together
Notably Sahara
Mervyn LeRoy
Director
1 film together
Notably Madame Curie
John Brahm
Director
1 film together
Notably The Lodger
Jean Yarbrough
Director
1 film together
Notably She-Wolf of London
Stanley Kubrick
Director
1 film together
Notably Spartacus
Clyde Geronimi
Director
1 film together
Notably One Hundred and One Dalmatians
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Roy William Neill
Director
3 films together · 6.5 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Terror by NightVictor Fleming
Director
2 films together · 6.4 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. HydeStanley Kubrick
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SpartacusClyde Geronimi
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
One Hundred and One DalmatiansJohn Ford
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
How Green Was My ValleyZoltan Korda
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SaharaRobert Stevenson
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Jane EyreMichael Curtiz
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 Sea HawkMervyn LeRoy
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Madame CurieFritz Lang
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Man HuntJohn Brahm
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 LodgerHenry 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
The Black SwanKing Vidor
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Northwest PassageJean Yarbrough
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
She-Wolf of LondonSix 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
How Green Was My Valley
as Dr. Richards
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Spartacus
as Laelius
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Spartacus
as Laelius
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Lodger
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
One Hundred and One Dalmatians
as Horace / Inspector Craven (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. Frederick Worlock 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
21 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Adventure Legend
Awarded
7 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
One Hundred and One Dalmatians
as Horace / Inspector Craven (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Terror by Night
as Prof. William Kilbane
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Spartacus
as Laelius
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Terror by Night
as Prof. William Kilbane
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Spartacus
as Laelius
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Spartacus
as Laelius
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
One Hundred and One Dalmatians
as Horace / Inspector Craven (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
She-Wolf of London
as Park Patrol Constable-in-Charge Ernie Hobbs
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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Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
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Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Robert Downey Jr.
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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