Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#4857
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Jack Conley represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 45 years in, and Jack is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Jack Conley appears in 16 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Jack. L.A. Confidential 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 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 action, comedy, crime. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with George Clooney, Ruben Fleischer, Justin Lin and others, Jack Conley 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.
L.A. Confidential (1997) as Vice Captain · Apollo 13 (1995) as Science Reporter · Payback (1999) as Det. Leary
Career snapshot
Ranked #4857 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
16
1980–2025
Career length
45 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.8
L.A. Confidential
Average Nutevio score
6.3
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.8
L.A. Confidential
Most frequent director
George Clooney
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With George Clooney
Most common genre
Crime
10 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
6.7
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
1990s
7.0 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Payback, Mercury Rising, L.A. Confidential — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
7.0
Across 5 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
7.0
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1980s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Heaven's Gate.
Most productive era
2000s
7 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 | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.71 film | 6.93 films | 5.92 films | 6.22 films | — |
| Action | — | 6.52 films | 6.04 films | 6.41 film | 5.51 film |
| Thriller | — | 6.84 films | 6.23 films | 6.22 films | — |
| Comedy | — | 6.51 film | 5.84 films | — | 5.51 film |
| Crime | — | 6.84 films | 6.33 films | 6.22 films | 5.51 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1980Heaven's Gate
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Morrison.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
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
2025Bad Man
The current state of the argument, as Mayor Boone.
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.
16 of 16 films
as Vice Captain
Directed by Curtis Hanson
as Science Reporter
Directed by Ron Howard
as Det. Leary
Directed by Brian Helgeland
as Penning
Directed by Justin Lin
as Morrison
Directed by Michael Cimino
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
Vice Captain
L.A. Confidential (1997)
Performance score7.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Vice Captain gives Jack Conley a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Science Reporter
Apollo 13 (1995)
Performance score7.3
Apollo 13 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Science Reporter is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Det. Leary
Payback (1999)
Performance score6.7
Payback asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Det. Leary is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Penning
Fast & Furious (2009)
Performance score6.6
Fast & Furious asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Penning 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 Vice Captain
Start here. L.A. Confidential is the clearest statement of what Jack Conley does — accessible, 138 minutes, and rated 7.8 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.
Heaven's Gate (1980)
A deliberate change of key after L.A. Confidential — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Apollo 13 (1995)
Keeps the drama register of Heaven's Gate but asks for a colder reading of it.
Payback (1999)
Keeps the drama register of Apollo 13 but asks for a colder reading of it.
Fast & Furious (2009)
Keeps the action register of Payback but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Michael Cimino
Director
1 film together
Notably Heaven's Gate
Barry Sonnenfeld
Director
1 film together
Notably Get Shorty
Ron Howard
Director
1 film together
Notably Apollo 13
Curtis Hanson
Director
1 film together
Notably L.A. Confidential
Brian Helgeland
Director
1 film together
Notably Payback
Andrew Davis
Director
1 film together
Notably Collateral Damage
Gregory Jacobs
Director
1 film together
Notably Criminal
Dean Parisot
Director
1 film together
Notably Fun with Dick and Jane
Jeff Lowell
Director
1 film together
Notably Over Her Dead Body
Wayne Kramer
Director
1 film together
Notably Crossing Over
Justin Lin
Director
1 film together
Notably Fast & Furious
Ruben Fleischer
Director
1 film together
Notably Gangster Squad
George Clooney
Director
1 film together
Notably Suburbicon
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Curtis Hanson
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
L.A. ConfidentialRon Howard
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Apollo 13Brian Helgeland
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
PaybackJustin Lin
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fast & FuriousMichael Cimino
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Heaven's GateBarry Sonnenfeld
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Get ShortyRuben Fleischer
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Gangster SquadDean Parisot
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fun with Dick and JaneGregory Jacobs
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
CriminalWayne Kramer
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Crossing OverGeorge Clooney
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SuburbiconAndrew Davis
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Collateral DamageJeff Lowell
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Over Her Dead BodySix 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
L.A. Confidential
as Vice Captain
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Apollo 13
as Science Reporter
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
L.A. Confidential
as Vice Captain
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Apollo 13
as Science Reporter
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
L.A. Confidential
as Vice Captain
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. Jack Conley 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
45 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.
Crime Legend
Awarded
10 catalogue titles in crime, 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
L.A. Confidential
as Vice Captain
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
L.A. Confidential
as Vice Captain
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Apollo 13
as Science Reporter
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
L.A. Confidential
as Vice Captain
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Payback
as Det. Leary
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
G-Force
as Agent Trigstad
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Apollo 13
as Science Reporter
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Apollo 13
as Science Reporter
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
Community
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Reference
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