Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#44044
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
J.D. Garfield represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 30 years in, and J.D. is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
J.D. Garfield appears in 7 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without J.D.. Flamin' Hot 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, drama, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for drama, history, action. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Sydney Freeland, Eva Longoria, Walter Hill and others, J.D. Garfield 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.
Flamin' Hot (2023) as Pastor Marco · North Country (2005) as Porta Guy #1 · Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018) as Alberto
Career snapshot
Ranked #44044 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
7
1994–2024
Career length
30 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.6
Flamin' Hot
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.9
Flamin' Hot
Most frequent director
Sydney Freeland
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Sydney Freeland
Most common genre
Drama
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 53m
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
2010s
7.0 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Sicario: Day of the Soldado — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.0
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
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. Troublemakers.
Most productive era
2020s
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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.52 films | — | 6.63 films |
| Action | — | — | 7.01 film | 5.81 film |
| Thriller | — | — | 7.01 film | 5.81 film |
| Comedy | 6.31 film | — | — | — |
| Crime | — | — | 7.01 film | — |
| Romance | 6.31 film | 5.71 film | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1994Troublemakers
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Russel Pyle.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2023Flamin' Hot
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
2024Rez Ball
The current state of the argument, as Jailer #1.
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.
7 of 7 films
as Pastor Marco
Directed by Eva Longoria
as Porta Guy #1
Directed by Niki Caro
as Alberto
Directed by Stefano Sollima
as Luis Andrade
Directed by Walter Hill
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
Pastor Marco
Flamin' Hot (2023)
Performance score7.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Pastor Marco gives J.D. Garfield a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Porta Guy #1
North Country (2005)
Performance score7.2
North Country asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Porta Guy #1 is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Alberto
Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018)
Performance score6.9
Sicario: Day of the Soldado asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Alberto is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Jailer #1
Rez Ball (2024)
Performance score6.5
Rez Ball asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Jailer #1 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 Pastor Marco
Start here. Flamin' Hot is the clearest statement of what J.D. Garfield does — accessible, 99 minutes, and rated 7.6 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet J.D. 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.
North Country (2005)
Keeps the drama register of Flamin' Hot but asks for a colder reading of it.
Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018)
A deliberate change of key after North Country — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Dead for a Dollar (2022)
Keeps the action register of Sicario: Day of the Soldado but asks for a colder reading of it.
Rez Ball (2024)
Keeps the drama register of Dead for a Dollar but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Terence Hill
Director
1 film together
Notably Troublemakers
Billy Bob Thornton
Director
1 film together
Notably All the Pretty Horses
Niki Caro
Director
1 film together
Notably North Country
Stefano Sollima
Director
1 film together
Notably Sicario: Day of the Soldado
Walter Hill
Director
1 film together
Notably Dead for a Dollar
Eva Longoria
Director
1 film together
Notably Flamin' Hot
Sydney Freeland
Director
1 film together
Notably Rez Ball
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Eva Longoria
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Flamin' HotNiki Caro
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
North CountryStefano Sollima
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Sicario: Day of the SoldadoSydney Freeland
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Rez BallTerence Hill
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
TroublemakersWalter Hill
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Dead for a DollarBilly Bob Thornton
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
All the Pretty HorsesSix 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
North Country
as Porta Guy #1
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Flamin' Hot
as Pastor Marco
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Flamin' Hot
as Pastor Marco
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Sicario: Day of the Soldado
as Alberto
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Flamin' Hot
as Pastor Marco
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. J.D. Garfield 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
30 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
5 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
Flamin' Hot
as Pastor Marco
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Sicario: Day of the Soldado
as Alberto
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Flamin' Hot
as Pastor Marco
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Sicario: Day of the Soldado
as Alberto
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Sicario: Day of the Soldado
as Alberto
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Dead for a Dollar
as Luis Andrade
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Troublemakers
as Russel Pyle
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Troublemakers
as Russel Pyle
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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