Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#4231
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Gerard Horan represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 28 years in, and Gerard is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Gerard Horan appears in 15 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Gerard. Imagine Me & You is the clearest case: a film rated 7.6 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 drama, history, science fiction. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Kenneth Branagh, Bill Condon, Michael Hoffman and others, Gerard Horan 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.
Imagine Me & You (2006) as Trevor · Belfast (2021) as Mackie · Beauty and the Beast (2017) as Jean the Potter
Career snapshot
Ranked #4231 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
15
1993–2021
Career length
28 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.6
Imagine Me & You
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.6
Imagine Me & You
Most frequent director
Kenneth Branagh
7 films together
Longest collaboration
7×
With Kenneth Branagh
Most common genre
Drama
12 titles
Average runtime
1h 50m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.9
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
6.6
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
7.1 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. The Bank Job, Imagine Me & You, Oliver Twist — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
7.1
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
7.0
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. Immortal Beloved, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Much Ado About Nothing.
Most productive era
2010s
6 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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.73 films | 7.14 films | 6.64 films | 7.01 film |
| Thriller | — | 6.91 film | — | — |
| Comedy | 6.91 film | 7.61 film | 5.51 film | — |
| Crime | — | 6.82 films | 6.12 films | — |
| Romance | 6.73 films | 7.61 film | 6.83 films | — |
| Horror | 6.51 film | — | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Borachio.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2006Imagine Me & You
7.6 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
2021Belfast
The current state of the argument, as Mackie.
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.
15 of 15 films
as Trevor
Directed by Unknown
as Mackie
Directed by Kenneth Branagh
as Jean the Potter
Directed by Bill Condon
as Roy Given
Directed by Roger Donaldson
as Ned Cheeryble
Directed by Douglas McGrath
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
Trevor
Imagine Me & You (2006)
Performance score7.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Trevor gives Gerard Horan a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Mackie
Belfast (2021)
Performance score6.9
Belfast asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mackie is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Jean the Potter
Beauty and the Beast (2017)
Performance score6.9
Beauty and the Beast asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Jean the Potter is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Roy Given
The Bank Job (2008)
Performance score6.8
The Bank Job asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Roy Given 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 Trevor
Start here. Imagine Me & You is the clearest statement of what Gerard Horan does — accessible, 93 minutes, and rated 7.6 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Gerard 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.
Nicholas Nickleby (2002)
Keeps the drama register of Imagine Me & You but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Bank Job (2008)
Keeps the drama register of Nicholas Nickleby but asks for a colder reading of it.
Beauty and the Beast (2017)
A deliberate change of key after The Bank Job — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Belfast (2021)
A deliberate change of key after Beauty and the Beast — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Kenneth Branagh
Director
7 films together
Notably Belfast
Bernard Rose
Director
1 film together
Notably Immortal Beloved
Douglas McGrath
Director
1 film together
Notably Nicholas Nickleby
Roman Polanski
Director
1 film together
Notably Oliver Twist
Roger Donaldson
Director
1 film together
Notably The Bank Job
Simon Curtis
Director
1 film together
Notably My Week with Marilyn
Michael Hoffman
Director
1 film together
Notably Gambit
Bill Condon
Director
1 film together
Notably Beauty and the Beast
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Kenneth Branagh
Director
7 films together · 6.5 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 7 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
BelfastBill Condon
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Beauty and the BeastRoger Donaldson
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 Bank JobDouglas McGrath
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Nicholas NicklebyRoman Polanski
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Oliver TwistBernard Rose
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Immortal BelovedSimon Curtis
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
My Week with MarilynMichael Hoffman
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
GambitSix 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
Imagine Me & You
as Trevor
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Beauty and the Beast
as Jean the Potter
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Imagine Me & You
as Trevor
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Murder on the Orient Express
as Aynesworth
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Imagine Me & You
as Trevor
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. Gerard Horan 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
28 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
12 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
Murder on the Orient Express
as Aynesworth
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Murder on the Orient Express
as Aynesworth
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Beauty and the Beast
as Jean the Potter
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Murder on the Orient Express
as Aynesworth
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Imagine Me & You
as Trevor
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Nicholas Nickleby
as Ned Cheeryble
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Much Ado About Nothing
as Borachio
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
as Claude
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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