Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#29017
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Gérard Darmon represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 52 years in, and Gérard is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Gérard Darmon appears in 14 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Gérard. Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra 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, quiet performance, comedy. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, comedy, fantasy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Lucien Jean-Baptiste, Hervé Mimran, Frank Bellocq and others, Gérard Darmon 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.
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra (2002) as Amonbofils · The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob (1973) as Farès Henchman · King (2022) as Grand-père Inès
Career snapshot
Ranked #29017 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
14
1973–2025
Career length
52 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.4
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
Average Nutevio score
5.1
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.4
The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob
Most frequent director
Lucien Jean-Baptiste
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Lucien Jean-Baptiste
Most common genre
Comedy
14 titles
Average runtime
1h 21m
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
2000s
7.4 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
7.4
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1970s
7.4
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1970s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob.
Most productive era
2020s
12 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 | 1970s | 2000s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Comedy | 7.11 film | 7.41 film | 4.812 films |
| Romance | — | — | 5.42 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1973The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Farès Henchman.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2002Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
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
The current state of the argument, as Antoine Toussaint.
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.
14 of 14 films
as Amonbofils
Directed by Alain Chabat
as Michel Stein
Directed by Unknown
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
Amonbofils
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra (2002)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Amonbofils gives Gérard Darmon a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Farès Henchman
The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob (1973)
Performance score7.0
The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Farès Henchman is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Grand-père Inès
King (2022)
Performance score6.9
King asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Grand-père Inès is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Antoine Toussaint
It Takes Two To Tango (2025)
Performance score6.5
It Takes Two To Tango asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Antoine Toussaint 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 Amonbofils
Start here. Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra is the clearest statement of what Gérard Darmon does — accessible, 108 minutes, and rated 7.4 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Gérard 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 Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob (1973)
Keeps the comedy register of Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra but asks for a colder reading of it.
King (2022)
Keeps the comedy register of The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob but asks for a colder reading of it.
Present Perfect (2024)
Same director as King, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
It Takes Two To Tango (2025)
Same director as Present Perfect, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Gérard Oury
Director
1 film together
Notably The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob
Alain Chabat
Director
1 film together
Notably Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
Kheiron
Director
1 film together
Notably Brutus vs Cesar
Jérôme Commandeur
Director
1 film together
Notably Employee of the Month
Frank Bellocq
Director
1 film together
Notably Pimp My Bride
Hervé Mimran
Director
1 film together
Notably The Scammers
Lucien Jean-Baptiste
Director
1 film together
Notably Start Me Up
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Alain Chabat
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Asterix & Obelix: Mission CleopatraGérard Oury
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Mad Adventures of Rabbi JacobJérôme Commandeur
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Employee of the MonthHervé Mimran
Director
1 film together · 5.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The ScammersLucien Jean-Baptiste
Director
1 film together · 5.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Start Me UpFrank Bellocq
Director
1 film together · 5.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Pimp My BrideKheiron
Director
1 film together · 4.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Brutus vs CesarSix 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
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
as Amonbofils
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
as Amonbofils
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
as Amonbofils
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob
as Farès Henchman
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
as Amonbofils
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. Gérard Darmon 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
52 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.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
14 catalogue titles in comedy, 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
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
as Amonbofils
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
as Amonbofils
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
as Amonbofils
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
as Amonbofils
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
as Amonbofils
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
King
as Grand-père Inès
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
as Amonbofils
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Present Perfect
as Michel Stein
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
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Reference
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