Jack Beresford

Performer

Jack Beresford

A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.

Born
Unknown
Active
1938–1999
Performances
3
In Nutevio
1938–1999
Known for
Sunshine
Performer Score
6.8
  • Hall of Fame
View filmography

Nutevio rank

#288303

of 909177 performers

Top 50%

Jack Beresford represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 61 years in, and Jack is still choosing the harder script.
Ranked #288303 of 909177 performers in the Nutevio catalogue. Recalculated automatically as titles and credits are imported.

The essay

Reading Jack Beresford

Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.

Why this performer matters

Jack Beresford appears in 3 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Jack. Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations is the clearest case: a film rated 6.6 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.

Signature style

The recognisable elements are quiet performance, screen presence, charisma. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, war, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.

Legacy

Working with István Szabó, Leni Riefenstahl, Jack Beresford 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.

Best known for

Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations (1938) as Self - Carries British Flag (uncredited) · Olympia Part Two: Festival of Beauty (1938) as Self - Rower, Britain (uncredited) · Sunshine (1999) as Self - Olympics, Carries UK Flag (archive footage) (uncredited)

Career snapshot

The career at a glance

Ranked #288303 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.

  • Films in Nutevio

    3

    1938–1999

  • Career length

    61 yrs

    Measured across our catalogue

  • Academy Awards

    Unknown

  • Oscar nominations

    Unknown

  • Highest Nutevio score

    6.6

    Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations

  • Average Nutevio score

    6.5

    Across catalogue work

  • Highest IMDb rating

    6.9

    Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations

  • Most frequent director

    Leni Riefenstahl

    2 films together

  • Longest collaboration

    With Leni Riefenstahl

  • Most common genre

    Documentary

    2 titles

  • Average runtime

    2h 17m

    Across catalogue work

  • Golden Globe wins

    Unknown

Nutevio metric

Performer Score

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.

  • Performance quality6.5
  • Consistency6.4
  • Emotional range6.4
  • Character transformation6.4
  • Cultural impact6.4
  • Iconic roles6.4
  • Career longevity9.9
  • Influence6.4
  • Awards recognition6.5
  • Rewatch value6.4

Nutevio metric

Influence Score

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.

  • Cultural impact5.9

    How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.

  • Legacy7.5

    What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.

  • Industry recognition6.6

    Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.

  • Career longevity9.9

    Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.

  • Awards6.4

    Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.

  • Iconic performances6.8

    Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.

  • Influence on filmmakers5.6

    Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.

  • Influence on other actors6.7

    The reading other performers now have to answer.

Actor DNA

How they work on screen

A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.

  • Quiet performance90
  • Screen presence70
  • Charisma66
  • Transformation66
  • Rewatchability63
  • Versatility56
  • Emotional range55
  • Drama38
  • Villain presence24
  • Intensity16
  • Action12
  • Physical performance10
  • Comedy9

The shape of a career

Career evolution

Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.

678910193819381999
  • Nutevio
  • Performance score
  • IMDb

Peak years

Best era

Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.

Best decade

1930s

6.5 average MV

The 1930s are where the work and the material meet. Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations, Olympia Part Two: Festival of Beauty — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.

Highest average Nutevio score

1930s

6.5

Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.

Highest average IMDb rating

1930s

6.8

The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.

Most awarded era

1930s

0 Academy Awards

Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations, Olympia Part Two: Festival of Beauty.

Most productive era

1930s

2 films

The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.

Range, mapped

Career heatmap

Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.

The career concentrates in drama during the 1990s, and the scores hold there.
Genre1930s1990s
Drama
6.41 film
Romance
6.41 film

Chronology

Career timeline

Firsts and peaks

Career milestones

The turning points, in the order they happened.

  1. First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak

    1938Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations

    Where our catalogue meets this career, as Self - Carries British Flag (uncredited). 6.6 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.

  2. Most recent film

    1999Sunshine

    The current state of the argument, as Self - Olympics, Carries UK Flag (archive footage) (uncredited).

Our order

Performances ranked

Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.

1
Official poster for Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations (1938)

Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations

1938 · Documentary

2h 7m

6.9IMDb
2
Official poster for Olympia Part Two: Festival of Beauty (1938)

Olympia Part Two: Festival of Beauty

1938 · Documentary

1h 44m

6.7IMDb
3
Official poster for Sunshine (1999)

Sunshine

1999 · Romance

3h 1m

6.4IMDb

Every title

Filmography

Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.

Genre
Decade
Sort

3 of 3 films

Official poster for Sunshine (1999)

as Self - Olympics, Carries UK Flag (archive footage) (uncredited)

Directed by István Szabó

IMDb6.4Rotten Tomatoes64%Metacritic593h 1mRomance · War · Drama · History
View movie

From the library

Complete credits

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

Signature performances

Official poster for Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations (1938)

#1

Self - Carries British Flag (uncredited)

Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations (1938)

Performance score7.0

The performance the rest of the career is read through. Self - Carries British Flag (uncredited) gives Jack Beresford a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.

View movie
Official poster for Olympia Part Two: Festival of Beauty (1938)

#2

Self - Rower, Britain (uncredited)

Olympia Part Two: Festival of Beauty (1938)

Performance score6.7

Olympia Part Two: Festival of Beauty asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self - Rower, Britain (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.

View movie
Official poster for Sunshine (1999)

#3

Self - Olympics, Carries UK Flag (archive footage) (uncredited)

Sunshine (1999)

Performance score6.5

Sunshine asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self - Olympics, Carries UK Flag (archive footage) (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.

View movie

Start here

The movie journey

A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.

Official poster for Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations (1938)

Best entry point

Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations

as Self - Carries British Flag (uncredited)

Start here. Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations is the clearest statement of what Jack Beresford does — accessible, 127 minutes, and rated 6.6 by our editors. No context required.

Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Jack 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.

  1. Official poster for Olympia Part Two: Festival of Beauty (1938)

    Olympia Part Two: Festival of Beauty (1938)

    Same director as Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.

  2. Official poster for Sunshine (1999)

    Sunshine (1999)

    A deliberate change of key after Olympia Part Two: Festival of Beauty — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.

Company kept

Frequent collaborators

The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.

Behind the camera

Director network

Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.

Six degrees

Connected through cinema

Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.

Categories of our own

Most rewatchable, most emotional, most influential

Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.

Most rewatchable

Official poster for Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations (1938)

Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations

as Self - Carries British Flag (uncredited)

The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.

Most emotional performance

Official poster for Sunshine (1999)

Sunshine

as Self - Olympics, Carries UK Flag (archive footage) (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

Official poster for Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations (1938)

Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations

as Self - Carries British Flag (uncredited)

You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.

Best ensemble performance

Official poster for Sunshine (1999)

Sunshine

as Self - Olympics, Carries UK Flag (archive footage) (uncredited)

Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.

Career defining performance

Official poster for Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations (1938)

Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations

as Self - Carries British Flag (uncredited)

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

Lines that stay

You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Jack Beresford has known it for a long time.

Nutevio Editors · On Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations

Head to head

Compare performers

Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.

Ours alone

Nutevio Honors

Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.

Career Achievement

Awarded

61 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.

Documentary Legend

Awarded

2 catalogue titles in documentary, each one a reference point for the films that followed.

Our desk

Editor's picks

Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.

Best ending

Official poster for Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations (1938)

Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations

as Self - Carries British Flag (uncredited)

The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.

Best opening

Official poster for Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations (1938)

Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations

as Self - Carries British Flag (uncredited)

A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.

Most emotional

Official poster for Sunshine (1999)

Sunshine

as Self - Olympics, Carries UK Flag (archive footage) (uncredited)

The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.

Best twist

Official poster for Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations (1938)

Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations

as Self - Carries British Flag (uncredited)

A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.

Best visual achievement

Official poster for Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations (1938)

Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations

as Self - Carries British Flag (uncredited)

Images that would survive with the sound switched off.

Best action sequence

Official poster for Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations (1938)

Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations

as Self - Carries British Flag (uncredited)

Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.

Best dialogue

Official poster for Sunshine (1999)

Sunshine

as Self - Olympics, Carries UK Flag (archive footage) (uncredited)

Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.

Most underrated film

Official poster for Sunshine (1999)

Sunshine

as Self - Olympics, Carries UK Flag (archive footage) (uncredited)

The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.

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Reference

Quick facts

Born
Unknown
Years active
1938–1999
Known for
Sunshine
Genres
Romance, War, Drama
Nutevio rank
#288303
of 909177 performers tracked

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