Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#29113
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Joseph Long works on versatility rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Joseph Long appears in 8 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Joseph. We Die Young is the clearest case: a film rated 6.8 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, history, action. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Ciro Guerra, Kenneth Branagh, Michael Cuesta and others, Joseph Long 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.
We Die Young (2019) as Luis · Murder on the Orient Express (2017) as Imam · Mrs. Henderson Presents (2005) as Harry
Career snapshot
Ranked #29113 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
8
1996–2020
Career length
24 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.8
We Die Young
Average Nutevio score
6.3
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
6.8
We Die Young
Most frequent director
Ciro Guerra
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Ciro Guerra
Most common genre
Drama
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 46m
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
6.4
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
2000s
6.7 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Mrs. Henderson Presents — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.7
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.7
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. Legionnaire, In Love and War.
Most productive era
2010s
4 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 | 5.91 film | 6.71 film | 6.82 films | 5.91 film |
| Action | 6.11 film | — | 6.53 films | — |
| Thriller | — | — | 6.53 films | — |
| Comedy | — | 6.71 film | — | — |
| Crime | — | — | 6.82 films | — |
| Romance | 5.91 film | — | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1996In Love and War
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Italian Doctor.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2019We Die Young
6.8 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
2020Waiting for the Barbarians
The current state of the argument, as Baker.
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.
8 of 8 films
as Luis
Directed by Unknown
as Imam
Directed by Kenneth Branagh
as General Rostami
Directed by Michael Cuesta
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
Luis
We Die Young (2019)
Performance score6.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Luis gives Joseph Long a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Imam
Murder on the Orient Express (2017)
Performance score6.6
Murder on the Orient Express asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Imam is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Harry
Mrs. Henderson Presents (2005)
Performance score6.6
Mrs. Henderson Presents asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Harry is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Baker
Waiting for the Barbarians (2020)
Performance score6.5
Waiting for the Barbarians asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Baker 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 Luis
Start here. We Die Young is the clearest statement of what Joseph Long does — accessible, 93 minutes, and rated 6.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Joseph 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.
Mrs. Henderson Presents (2005)
Keeps the drama register of We Die Young but asks for a colder reading of it.
Murder on the Orient Express (2017)
Keeps the drama register of Mrs. Henderson Presents but asks for a colder reading of it.
American Assassin (2017)
A deliberate change of key after Murder on the Orient Express — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Waiting for the Barbarians (2020)
A deliberate change of key after American Assassin — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Richard Attenborough
Director
1 film together
Notably In Love and War
Peter MacDonald
Director
1 film together
Notably Legionnaire
Stephen Frears
Director
1 film together
Notably Mrs. Henderson Presents
Steven Knight
Director
1 film together
Notably Hummingbird
Michael Cuesta
Director
1 film together
Notably American Assassin
Kenneth Branagh
Director
1 film together
Notably Murder on the Orient Express
Ciro Guerra
Director
1 film together
Notably Waiting for the Barbarians
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Kenneth Branagh
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Murder on the Orient ExpressStephen Frears
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mrs. Henderson PresentsMichael Cuesta
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
American AssassinSteven Knight
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
HummingbirdPeter MacDonald
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
LegionnaireCiro Guerra
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Waiting for the BarbariansRichard Attenborough
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
In Love and WarSix 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
Murder on the Orient Express
as Imam
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
In Love and War
as Italian Doctor
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Mrs. Henderson Presents
as Harry
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Mrs. Henderson Presents
as Harry
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
We Die Young
as Luis
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. Joseph Long 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
24 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
Murder on the Orient Express
as Imam
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
We Die Young
as Luis
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
In Love and War
as Italian Doctor
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Murder on the Orient Express
as Imam
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
We Die Young
as Luis
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
American Assassin
as General Rostami
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
We Die Young
as Luis
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Legionnaire
as Maxim
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Robert Downey Jr.
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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