Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#29528
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
George Macready 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.
George Macready appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without George. Paths of Glory is the clearest case: a film rated 8.1 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 war, drama, history. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Richard Fleischer, Blake Edwards, Roy Del Ruth and others, George Macready 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.
Paths of Glory (1957) as Gen. Paul Mireau · Gilda (1946) as Ballin Mundson · Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) as Cordell Hull
Career snapshot
Ranked #29528 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
1946–1970
Career length
24 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.1
Paths of Glory
Average Nutevio score
6.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.3
Paths of Glory
Most frequent director
Richard Fleischer
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Richard Fleischer
Most common genre
Drama
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 48m
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
6.7
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
1970s
7.0 average MV
The 1970s are where the work and the material meet. Tora! Tora! Tora! — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1970s
7.0
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1940s
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. The Big Clock, Gilda.
Most productive era
1950s
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 | 1940s | 1950s | 1960s | 1970s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.11 film | 7.13 films | — | 7.01 film |
| Action | — | 6.51 film | 6.91 film | — |
| Thriller | 6.92 films | — | — | — |
| Comedy | — | — | 6.91 film | — |
| Crime | 6.81 film | — | — | — |
| Romance | 7.11 film | — | 6.91 film | — |
| Horror | — | 6.01 film | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1946Gilda
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Ballin Mundson.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1957Paths of Glory
8.1 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 Cordell Hull.
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.
9 of 9 films
as Gen. Paul Mireau
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
as Ballin Mundson
Directed by Charles Vidor
as Steve Hagen
Directed by John Farrow
as Cordell Hull
Directed by Richard Fleischer
as General Kuhster
Directed by Blake Edwards
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
Gen. Paul Mireau
Paths of Glory (1957)
Performance score8.1
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Gen. Paul Mireau gives George Macready a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Ballin Mundson
Gilda (1946)
Performance score7.5
Gilda asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Ballin Mundson is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Steve Hagen
The Big Clock (1948)
Performance score7.0
The Big Clock asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Steve Hagen is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Cordell Hull
Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)
Performance score6.9
Tora! Tora! Tora! asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Cordell Hull 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 Gen. Paul Mireau
Start here. Paths of Glory is the clearest statement of what George Macready does — accessible, 88 minutes, and rated 8.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet George 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.
Gilda (1946)
Keeps the drama register of Paths of Glory but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Big Clock (1948)
Keeps the thriller register of Gilda but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Great Race (1965)
A deliberate change of key after The Big Clock — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)
A deliberate change of key after The Great Race — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Charles Vidor
Director
1 film together
Notably Gilda
John Farrow
Director
1 film together
Notably The Big Clock
Henry Hathaway
Director
1 film together
Notably The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel
Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Director
1 film together
Notably Julius Caesar
Robert Aldrich
Director
1 film together
Notably Vera Cruz
Stanley Kubrick
Director
1 film together
Notably Paths of Glory
Roy Del Ruth
Director
1 film together
Notably The Alligator People
Blake Edwards
Director
1 film together
Notably The Great Race
Richard Fleischer
Director
1 film together
Notably Tora! Tora! Tora!
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Stanley Kubrick
Director
1 film together · 8.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Paths of GloryCharles Vidor
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
GildaRichard Fleischer
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Tora! Tora! Tora!Blake Edwards
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Great RaceJoseph L. Mankiewicz
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Julius CaesarJohn Farrow
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 Big ClockRobert Aldrich
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Vera CruzHenry Hathaway
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 Desert Fox: The Story of RommelRoy Del Ruth
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Alligator PeopleSix 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
Paths of Glory
as Gen. Paul Mireau
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Gilda
as Ballin Mundson
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Paths of Glory
as Gen. Paul Mireau
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Tora! Tora! Tora!
as Cordell Hull
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Paths of Glory
as Gen. Paul Mireau
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. George Macready 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
24 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Drama Legend
Awarded
5 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
Paths of Glory
as Gen. Paul Mireau
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Big Clock
as Steve Hagen
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Great Race
as General Kuhster
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Alligator People
as Dr. Mark Sinclair
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Paths of Glory
as Gen. Paul Mireau
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Great Race
as General Kuhster
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Great Race
as General Kuhster
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Alligator People
as Dr. Mark Sinclair
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
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Reference
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