Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#92384
of 909177 performers
Top 25%
Howard Da Silva represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 33 years in, and Howard is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Howard Da Silva appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Howard. The Lost Weekend is the clearest case: a film rated 7.2 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 romance, drama, western. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Jack Clayton, Henry Hathaway, Joseph Losey and others, Howard Da Silva 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 Lost Weekend (1945) as Nat the Bartender · Sergeant York (1941) as Lem · The Sea Wolf (1941) as Harrison
Career snapshot
Ranked #92384 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
1941–1974
Career length
33 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.2
The Lost Weekend
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.6
The Lost Weekend
Most frequent director
Jack Clayton
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Jack Clayton
Most common genre
Drama
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 55m
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
6.7
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
1940s
6.7 average MV
The 1940s are where the work and the material meet. They Live by Night, Unconquered, The Blue Dahlia — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1940s
6.7
Across 6 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1940s
7.0
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. They Live by Night, Unconquered, The Blue Dahlia.
Most productive era
1940s
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 | 1940s | 1950s | 1960s | 1970s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.85 films | 6.41 film | — | 6.41 film |
| Thriller | — | 6.41 film | — | — |
| Crime | 6.52 films | 6.41 film | — | — |
| Romance | 6.61 film | — | — | 6.41 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1941The Sea Wolf
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Harrison.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1945The Lost Weekend
7.2 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
1974The Great Gatsby
The current state of the argument, as Meyer Wolfsheim.
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.
9 of 9 films
as Nat the Bartender
Directed by Billy Wilder
as Chicamaw One-Eye Mobley
Directed by Nicholas Ray
as Inspector Carney
Directed by Joseph Losey
as Garth
Directed by Cecil B. DeMille
as Lem
Directed by Howard Hawks
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
Nat the Bartender
The Lost Weekend (1945)
Performance score7.3
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Nat the Bartender gives Howard Da Silva a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Chicamaw One-Eye Mobley
They Live by Night (1949)
Performance score7.0
They Live by Night asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Chicamaw One-Eye Mobley is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Inspector Carney
M (1951)
Performance score6.9
M asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Inspector Carney is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Garth
Unconquered (1947)
Performance score6.9
Unconquered asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Garth 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 Nat the Bartender
Start here. The Lost Weekend is the clearest statement of what Howard Da Silva does — accessible, 101 minutes, and rated 7.2 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Howard 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.
Sergeant York (1941)
Keeps the drama register of The Lost Weekend but asks for a colder reading of it.
Unconquered (1947)
Keeps the drama register of Sergeant York but asks for a colder reading of it.
They Live by Night (1949)
Keeps the drama register of Unconquered but asks for a colder reading of it.
M (1951)
Keeps the crime register of They Live by Night but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Howard Hawks
Director
1 film together
Notably Sergeant York
Michael Curtiz
Director
1 film together
Notably The Sea Wolf
Billy Wilder
Director
1 film together
Notably The Lost Weekend
George Marshall
Director
1 film together
Notably The Blue Dahlia
Cecil B. DeMille
Director
1 film together
Notably Unconquered
Nicholas Ray
Director
1 film together
Notably They Live by Night
Joseph Losey
Director
1 film together
Notably M
Henry Hathaway
Director
1 film together
Notably Nevada Smith
Jack Clayton
Director
1 film together
Notably The Great Gatsby
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Billy Wilder
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 Lost WeekendHoward Hawks
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Sergeant YorkMichael Curtiz
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Sea WolfHenry Hathaway
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Nevada SmithNicholas Ray
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
They Live by NightGeorge Marshall
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Blue DahliaJack Clayton
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 Great GatsbyJoseph Losey
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
MCecil B. DeMille
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
UnconqueredSix 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
Sergeant York
as Lem
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 Great Gatsby
as Meyer Wolfsheim
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 Lost Weekend
as Nat the Bartender
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Sergeant York
as Lem
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Lost Weekend
as Nat the Bartender
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. Howard Da Silva 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
33 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Drama Legend
Awarded
7 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
The Lost Weekend
as Nat the Bartender
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Blue Dahlia
as Eddie Harwood
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Great Gatsby
as Meyer Wolfsheim
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
M
as Inspector Carney
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Sea Wolf
as Harrison
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Unconquered
as Garth
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Great Gatsby
as Meyer Wolfsheim
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Great Gatsby
as Meyer Wolfsheim
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Reference
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