Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#20478
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
James Greene represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 30 years in, and James is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
James Greene appears in 7 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without James. Loving Vincent 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 drama, animation, history. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with DK Welchman, Guy Ritchie, Neil Jordan and others, James Greene 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.
Loving Vincent (2017) as Old Peasant · Sherlock Holmes (2009) as Governor · Empire of the Sun (1987) as British Prisoner
Career snapshot
Ranked #20478 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
7
1987–2017
Career length
30 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.8
Loving Vincent
Average Nutevio score
6.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.0
Loving Vincent
Most frequent director
DK Welchman
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With DK Welchman
Most common genre
Drama
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 59m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.2
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
6.8
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
7.8 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Loving Vincent — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.8
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
8.0
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. Empire of the Sun.
Most productive era
2000s
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 | 1980s | 2000s | 2010s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.41 film | 6.43 films | 7.81 film |
| Action | — | 7.41 film | — |
| Thriller | — | 6.22 films | — |
| Comedy | — | 6.82 films | — |
| Romance | — | 6.02 films | — |
| Horror | — | 6.71 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as British Prisoner.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2017Loving Vincent
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. The current state of the argument, as Old Peasant.
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 Old Peasant
Directed by DK Welchman
as Governor
Directed by Guy Ritchie
as British Prisoner
Directed by Steven Spielberg
as Masonic Governor
Directed by Albert Hughes
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
Old Peasant
Loving Vincent (2017)
Performance score7.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Old Peasant gives James Greene a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Governor
Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Performance score7.2
Sherlock Holmes asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Governor is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
British Prisoner
Empire of the Sun (1987)
Performance score7.2
Empire of the Sun asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. British Prisoner is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Gentleman
Breakfast on Pluto (2005)
Performance score7.1
Breakfast on Pluto asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Gentleman 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 Old Peasant
Start here. Loving Vincent is the clearest statement of what James Greene does — accessible, 95 minutes, and rated 7.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet James 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.
Empire of the Sun (1987)
Keeps the drama register of Loving Vincent but asks for a colder reading of it.
From Hell (2001)
A deliberate change of key after Empire of the Sun — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Breakfast on Pluto (2005)
A deliberate change of key after From Hell — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Sherlock Holmes (2009)
A deliberate change of key after Breakfast on Pluto — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Steven Spielberg
Director
1 film together
Notably Empire of the Sun
Albert Hughes
Director
1 film together
Notably From Hell
Dennie Gordon
Director
1 film together
Notably What a Girl Wants
Brian Helgeland
Director
1 film together
Notably The Order
Neil Jordan
Director
1 film together
Notably Breakfast on Pluto
Guy Ritchie
Director
1 film together
Notably Sherlock Holmes
DK Welchman
Director
1 film together
Notably Loving Vincent
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
DK Welchman
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Loving VincentGuy Ritchie
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Sherlock HolmesSteven Spielberg
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Empire of the SunNeil Jordan
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Breakfast on PlutoAlbert Hughes
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
From HellDennie Gordon
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
What a Girl WantsBrian Helgeland
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The OrderSix 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
Sherlock Holmes
as Governor
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Loving Vincent
as Old Peasant
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Loving Vincent
as Old Peasant
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Breakfast on Pluto
as Gentleman
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Loving Vincent
as Old Peasant
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. James Greene 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
Loving Vincent
as Old Peasant
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Sherlock Holmes
as Governor
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Loving Vincent
as Old Peasant
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
From Hell
as Masonic Governor
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Sherlock Holmes
as Governor
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Sherlock Holmes
as Governor
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
What a Girl Wants
as Percy
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Sherlock Holmes
as Governor
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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