Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#8874
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Gary Basaraba represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 36 years in, and Gary is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Gary Basaraba appears in 12 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Gary. Sound of Freedom is the clearest case: a film rated 7.8 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 action, drama, crime. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Alejandro Monteverde, Martin Scorsese, Donald Petrie and others, Gary Basaraba 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.
Sound of Freedom (2023) as Earl Buchanan · Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) as Detective Burns · The Accountant (2016) as Don
Career snapshot
Ranked #8874 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
12
1987–2023
Career length
36 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.8
Sound of Freedom
Average Nutevio score
6.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.0
Sound of Freedom
Most frequent director
Martin Scorsese
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Martin Scorsese
Most common genre
Drama
8 titles
Average runtime
2h 5m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.0
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
6.8
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
2020s
7.6 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Sound of Freedom, Killers of the Flower Moon — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
7.6
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
7.7
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 Last Temptation of Christ, Who's That Girl.
Most productive era
2010s
4 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 | 7.11 film | 6.51 film | 6.81 film | 6.73 films | 7.62 films |
| Action | — | — | 6.51 film | — | 7.81 film |
| Thriller | — | — | 6.72 films | 6.72 films | — |
| Comedy | 6.01 film | — | 6.41 film | 6.61 film | — |
| Crime | — | — | 6.51 film | 6.73 films | 7.41 film |
| Romance | 6.01 film | — | 6.81 film | 6.61 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1987Who's That Girl
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Shipping Clerk.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2023Sound of Freedom
7.8 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
2023Killers of the Flower Moon
The current state of the argument, as Detective Burns.
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.
12 of 12 films
as Earl Buchanan
Directed by Alejandro Monteverde
as Detective Burns
Directed by Martin Scorsese
as Don
Directed by Gavin O'Connor
as Detective Mirojnick
Directed by Adrian Lyne
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
Earl Buchanan
Sound of Freedom (2023)
Performance score7.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Earl Buchanan gives Gary Basaraba a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Detective Burns
Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)
Performance score7.2
Killers of the Flower Moon asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Detective Burns is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Don
The Accountant (2016)
Performance score7.2
The Accountant asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Don is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Detective Mirojnick
Unfaithful (2002)
Performance score7.0
Unfaithful asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Detective Mirojnick 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 Earl Buchanan
Start here. Sound of Freedom is the clearest statement of what Gary Basaraba does — accessible, 131 minutes, and rated 7.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Gary 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 Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
Keeps the drama register of Sound of Freedom but asks for a colder reading of it.
Unfaithful (2002)
Keeps the drama register of The Last Temptation of Christ but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Accountant (2016)
Keeps the drama register of Unfaithful but asks for a colder reading of it.
Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)
Keeps the crime register of The Accountant but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Martin Scorsese
Director
2 films together
Notably Killers of the Flower Moon
James Foley
Director
1 film together
Notably Who's That Girl
Jon Avnet
Director
1 film together
Notably The War
Adrian Lyne
Director
1 film together
Notably Unfaithful
Tony Scott
Director
1 film together
Notably The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
Gavin O'Connor
Director
1 film together
Notably The Accountant
George Clooney
Director
1 film together
Notably Suburbicon
Bart Layton
Director
1 film together
Notably American Animals
Donald Petrie
Director
1 film together
Notably Little Italy
Alejandro Monteverde
Director
1 film together
Notably Sound of Freedom
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Martin Scorsese
Director
2 films together · 7.3 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Killers of the Flower MoonAlejandro Monteverde
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Sound of FreedomGavin O'Connor
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The AccountantAdrian Lyne
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
UnfaithfulBart Layton
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
American AnimalsDonald Petrie
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Little ItalyTony Scott
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 Taking of Pelham 1 2 3Jon Avnet
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 WarGeorge Clooney
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SuburbiconJames Foley
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Who's That GirlSix 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
Sound of Freedom
as Earl Buchanan
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Unfaithful
as Detective Mirojnick
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Sound of Freedom
as Earl Buchanan
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Who's That Girl
as Shipping Clerk
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Sound of Freedom
as Earl Buchanan
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. Gary Basaraba 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
36 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
Sound of Freedom
as Earl Buchanan
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Accountant
as Don
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Unfaithful
as Detective Mirojnick
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Suburbicon
as Uncle Mitch
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Sound of Freedom
as Earl Buchanan
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Sound of Freedom
as Earl Buchanan
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Killers of the Flower Moon
as Detective Burns
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Who's That Girl
as Shipping Clerk
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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Works with the same directors — Martin Scorsese
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
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Built a career in the same territory: family and comedy
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: family and comedy
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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