Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#112883
of 909177 performers
Top 25%
Henri Virlogeux works on quiet performance 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.
Henri Virlogeux appears in 4 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Henri. The 400 Blows 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 quiet performance, transformation, comedy. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for comedy, adventure, family. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Albert Uderzo, Raymond Leblanc, Gérard Oury and others, Henri Virlogeux 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.
The 400 Blows (1959) as Le garde de nuit · The Twelve Tasks of Asterix (1976) as Panoramix / Iris / Décurion (voice) · The Sucker (1965) as Un complice de Saroyan
Career snapshot
Ranked #112883 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
4
1959–1976
Career length
17 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.8
The 400 Blows
Average Nutevio score
7.1
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.0
The 400 Blows
Most frequent director
Albert Uderzo
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Albert Uderzo
Most common genre
Comedy
3 titles
Average runtime
1h 33m
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
6.6
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
1950s
7.8 average MV
The 1950s are where the work and the material meet. The 400 Blows — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1950s
7.8
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1950s
8.0
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1950s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The 400 Blows.
Most productive era
1960s
2 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 | 1950s | 1960s | 1970s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.81 film | — | — |
| Comedy | — | 6.82 films | 7.21 film |
| Crime | — | 7.11 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
1959The 400 Blows
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Le garde de nuit. 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
1976The Twelve Tasks of Asterix
The current state of the argument, as Panoramix / Iris / Décurion (voice).
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.
4 of 4 films
as Le garde de nuit
Directed by François Truffaut
as Panoramix / Iris / Décurion (voice)
Directed by Albert Uderzo
as Un complice de Saroyan
Directed by Gérard Oury
as Scholar #2 (voice)
Directed by Raymond Leblanc
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
Le garde de nuit
The 400 Blows (1959)
Performance score7.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Le garde de nuit gives Henri Virlogeux a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Panoramix / Iris / Décurion (voice)
The Twelve Tasks of Asterix (1976)
Performance score7.3
The Twelve Tasks of Asterix asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Panoramix / Iris / Décurion (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Un complice de Saroyan
The Sucker (1965)
Performance score7.0
The Sucker asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Un complice de Saroyan is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Scholar #2 (voice)
Tintin and the Temple of the Sun (1969)
Performance score6.5
Tintin and the Temple of the Sun asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Scholar #2 (voice) 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 Le garde de nuit
Start here. The 400 Blows is the clearest statement of what Henri Virlogeux does — accessible, 99 minutes, and rated 7.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Henri 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 Sucker (1965)
A deliberate change of key after The 400 Blows — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Tintin and the Temple of the Sun (1969)
Keeps the comedy register of The Sucker but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Twelve Tasks of Asterix (1976)
Keeps the comedy register of Tintin and the Temple of the Sun but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
François Truffaut
Director
1 film together
Notably The 400 Blows
Gérard Oury
Director
1 film together
Notably The Sucker
Raymond Leblanc
Director
1 film together
Notably Tintin and the Temple of the Sun
Albert Uderzo
Director
1 film together
Notably The Twelve Tasks of Asterix
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
François Truffaut
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The 400 BlowsAlbert Uderzo
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Twelve Tasks of AsterixGérard 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 SuckerRaymond Leblanc
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Tintin and the Temple of the SunSix 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
The 400 Blows
as Le garde de nuit
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
The Twelve Tasks of Asterix
as Panoramix / Iris / Décurion (voice)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
The 400 Blows
as Le garde de nuit
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The 400 Blows
as Le garde de nuit
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The 400 Blows
as Le garde de nuit
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. Henri Virlogeux 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.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
3 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
The 400 Blows
as Le garde de nuit
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The 400 Blows
as Le garde de nuit
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Twelve Tasks of Asterix
as Panoramix / Iris / Décurion (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Sucker
as Un complice de Saroyan
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The 400 Blows
as Le garde de nuit
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Twelve Tasks of Asterix
as Panoramix / Iris / Décurion (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Twelve Tasks of Asterix
as Panoramix / Iris / Décurion (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Twelve Tasks of Asterix
as Panoramix / Iris / Décurion (voice)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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