Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#30234
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Herbert Lom represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 76 years in, and Herbert is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Herbert Lom appears in 15 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Herbert. Spartacus 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, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for science fiction, horror, documentary. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with J. Lee Thompson, David Cronenberg, Blake Edwards and others, Herbert Lom 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.
Spartacus (1960) as Tigranes Levantus · The Dead Zone (1983) as Dr. Sam Weizak · Gambit (1966) as Shahbandar
Career snapshot
Ranked #30234 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
15
1945–2021
Career length
76 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.4
Spartacus
Average Nutevio score
6.3
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.5
Spartacus
Most frequent director
Blake Edwards
4 films together
Longest collaboration
4×
With Blake Edwards
Most common genre
Comedy
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 57m
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
6.9
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
1960s
6.9 average MV
The 1960s are where the work and the material meet. Gambit, A Shot in the Dark, El Cid — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1960s
6.9
Across 5 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1950s
7.1
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 Seventh Veil.
Most productive era
1960s
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 | 1980s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.41 film | 6.82 films | 7.12 films | — | — | — |
| Action | — | — | 6.71 film | — | 5.41 film | — |
| Thriller | — | — | — | — | 7.01 film | — |
| Comedy | — | 7.01 film | 7.02 films | 6.63 films | 5.41 film | — |
| Crime | — | 7.02 films | 7.02 films | 6.63 films | — | — |
| Romance | — | 6.51 film | 6.71 film | — | — | — |
| Horror | — | — | — | — | 7.01 film | 0.01 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1945The Seventh Veil
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Dr. Larsen.
Career peak
1955The Ladykillers
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
1960Spartacus
7.4 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
2021Titans of Destruction: The Evolution of Giant Monster Movies
The current state of the argument, as Self - (archive footage).
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 Shahbandar
Directed by Ronald Neame
as Louis, alias 'Mr. Harvey'
Directed by Alexander Mackendrick
as Tigranes Levantus
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
as Dr. Sam Weizak
Directed by David Cronenberg
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
Shahbandar
Gambit (1966)
Performance score7.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Shahbandar gives Herbert Lom a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Louis, alias 'Mr. Harvey'
The Ladykillers (1955)
Performance score7.4
The Ladykillers asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Louis, alias 'Mr. Harvey' is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Dreyfus
The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)
Performance score7.2
The Pink Panther Strikes Again asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Dreyfus is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Tigranes Levantus
Spartacus (1960)
Performance score7.2
Spartacus asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Tigranes Levantus 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 Shahbandar
Start here. Gambit is the clearest statement of what Herbert Lom does — accessible, 109 minutes, and rated 7.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Herbert 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 Ladykillers (1955)
Keeps the comedy register of Gambit but asks for a colder reading of it.
Spartacus (1960)
A deliberate change of key after The Ladykillers — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)
A deliberate change of key after Spartacus — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Dead Zone (1983)
A deliberate change of key after The Pink Panther Strikes Again — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Blake Edwards
Director
4 films together
Notably A Shot in the Dark
Compton Bennett
Director
1 film together
Notably The Seventh Veil
Jules Dassin
Director
1 film together
Notably Night and the City
Alexander Mackendrick
Director
1 film together
Notably The Ladykillers
King Vidor
Director
1 film together
Notably War and Peace
Stanley Kubrick
Director
1 film together
Notably Spartacus
Cy Endfield
Director
1 film together
Notably Mysterious Island
Anthony Mann
Director
1 film together
Notably El Cid
Ronald Neame
Director
1 film together
Notably Gambit
David Cronenberg
Director
1 film together
Notably The Dead Zone
J. Lee Thompson
Director
1 film together
Notably King Solomon's Mines
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Blake Edwards
Director
4 films together · 6.7 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 4 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
A Shot in the DarkStanley Kubrick
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SpartacusDavid Cronenberg
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Dead ZoneRonald Neame
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
GambitAlexander Mackendrick
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The LadykillersJules Dassin
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Night and the CityAnthony Mann
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
El CidCy Endfield
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mysterious IslandKing Vidor
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
War and PeaceCompton Bennett
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Seventh VeilJ. Lee Thompson
Director
1 film together · 5.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
King Solomon's MinesSix 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
Gambit
as Shahbandar
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Spartacus
as Tigranes Levantus
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Spartacus
as Tigranes Levantus
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
El Cid
as Ben Yussuf
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Gambit
as Shahbandar
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. Herbert Lom 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
76 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
7 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
A Shot in the Dark
as Charles Dreyfus
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
A Shot in the Dark
as Charles Dreyfus
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
El Cid
as Ben Yussuf
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Return of the Pink Panther
as Chief Inspector Dreyfus
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Spartacus
as Tigranes Levantus
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
King Solomon's Mines
as Colonel Bockner
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
War and Peace
as Napoleon
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Gambit
as Shahbandar
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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