Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Hans Meyer appears in 8 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Hans. Barry Lyndon 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, horror, adventure. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Tsui Hark, Richard Fleischer, Stanley Kubrick and others, Hans Meyer 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.
Barry Lyndon (1975) as Prussian Officer · Don't Look Now... We're Being Shot At! (1966) as Otto Weber · Pierrot le Fou (1965) as Gangster (uncredited)
Career snapshot
A Nutevio catalogue profile for Hans Meyer.
Films in Nutevio
8
1965–2001
Career length
36 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.8
Barry Lyndon
Average Nutevio score
6.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.0
Barry Lyndon
Most frequent director
Tsui Hark
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Tsui Hark
Most common genre
Action
4 titles
Average runtime
2h 6m
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
1970s
7.3 average MV
The 1970s are where the work and the material meet. Barry Lyndon, The Magnificent One — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1970s
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
1970s
7.5
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1960s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Night of the Generals, Don't Look Now... We're Being Shot At!, Pierrot le Fou.
Most productive era
1960s
3 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 | 1960s | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.11 film | 7.81 film | — | — | — |
| Action | — | 6.81 film | 5.81 film | 5.71 film | 6.71 film |
| Thriller | 6.61 film | — | — | — | — |
| Comedy | 7.61 film | 6.81 film | — | — | — |
| Crime | 6.82 films | — | — | — | — |
| Romance | 7.11 film | 6.81 film | — | — | — |
| Horror | — | — | — | — | 6.71 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1965Pierrot le Fou
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Gangster (uncredited).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1975Barry Lyndon
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
The current state of the argument, as Marquis d'Apcher.
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.
8 of 8 films
as Prussian Officer
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
as Colonel Collins
Directed by Philippe de Broca
as Gangster (uncredited)
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
as Marquis d'Apcher
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.
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The defining work
#1
Prussian Officer
Barry Lyndon (1975)
Performance score7.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Prussian Officer gives Hans Meyer a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Otto Weber
Don't Look Now... We're Being Shot At! (1966)
Performance score7.4
Don't Look Now... We're Being Shot At! asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Otto Weber is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Colonel Collins
The Magnificent One (1973)
Performance score7.0
The Magnificent One asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Colonel Collins is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Gangster (uncredited)
Pierrot le Fou (1965)
Performance score7.0
Pierrot le Fou asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Gangster (uncredited) 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 Prussian Officer
Start here. Barry Lyndon is the clearest statement of what Hans Meyer does — accessible, 188 minutes, and rated 7.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Hans 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.
Pierrot le Fou (1965)
Keeps the drama register of Barry Lyndon but asks for a colder reading of it.
Don't Look Now... We're Being Shot At! (1966)
A deliberate change of key after Pierrot le Fou — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Magnificent One (1973)
Keeps the comedy register of Don't Look Now... We're Being Shot At! but asks for a colder reading of it.
Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001)
Keeps the action register of The Magnificent One but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Jean-Luc Godard
Director
1 film together
Notably Pierrot le Fou
Gérard Oury
Director
1 film together
Notably Don't Look Now... We're Being Shot At!
Anatole Litvak
Director
1 film together
Notably The Night of the Generals
Philippe de Broca
Director
1 film together
Notably The Magnificent One
Stanley Kubrick
Director
1 film together
Notably Barry Lyndon
Richard Fleischer
Director
1 film together
Notably Red Sonja
Tsui Hark
Director
1 film together
Notably Double Team
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Stanley Kubrick
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Barry LyndonGérard Oury
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Don't Look Now... We're Being Shot At!Jean-Luc Godard
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Pierrot le FouPhilippe de Broca
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 Magnificent OneAnatole Litvak
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Night of the GeneralsRichard Fleischer
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Red SonjaTsui Hark
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Double TeamSix 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
Don't Look Now... We're Being Shot At!
as Otto Weber
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Pierrot le Fou
as Gangster (uncredited)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Barry Lyndon
as Prussian Officer
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Night of the Generals
as Wehrmacht Adjutant (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Barry Lyndon
as Prussian Officer
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. Hans Meyer 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.
Action Legend
Awarded
4 catalogue titles in action, 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
Barry Lyndon
as Prussian Officer
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Brotherhood of the Wolf
as Marquis d'Apcher
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Pierrot le Fou
as Gangster (uncredited)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Night of the Generals
as Wehrmacht Adjutant (uncredited)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Brotherhood of the Wolf
as Marquis d'Apcher
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Brotherhood of the Wolf
as Marquis d'Apcher
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Barry Lyndon
as Prussian Officer
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Double Team
as British Man
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
Community
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Reference
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