Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#4128
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Judd Hirsch represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 53 years in, and Judd is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Judd Hirsch appears in 15 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Judd. A Beautiful Mind is the clearest case: a film rated 8.0 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 romance, comedy, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Matthew Shear, Michael J. Weithorn, Steven Spielberg and others, Judd Hirsch 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.
A Beautiful Mind (2001) as Helinger · The Fabelmans (2022) as Uncle Boris · Serpico (1973) as Cop (uncredited)
Career snapshot
Ranked #4128 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
15
1973–2026
Career length
53 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.0
A Beautiful Mind
Average Nutevio score
6.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.8
A Beautiful Mind
Most frequent director
Roland Emmerich
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Roland Emmerich
Most common genre
Drama
10 titles
Average runtime
1h 58m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.0
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
7.0
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
8.0 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. A Beautiful Mind — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
8.0
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
7.8
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1970s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Serpico.
Most productive era
2010s
6 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 | 1970s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.41 film | — | 8.01 film | 6.93 films | 6.55 films |
| Action | — | 7.11 film | — | 5.82 films | — |
| Thriller | — | — | — | 7.21 film | — |
| Comedy | — | — | — | 6.43 films | 6.44 films |
| Crime | 7.41 film | — | — | 7.21 film | — |
| Romance | — | — | 8.01 film | — | 6.63 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1973Serpico
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Cop (uncredited).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2001A Beautiful Mind
8.0 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
2026Fantasy Life
The current state of the argument, as Fred.
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.
15 of 15 films
as Helinger
Directed by Ron Howard
as Walter Rand
Directed by Michael J. Weithorn
as Uncle Boris
Directed by Steven Spielberg
as Julius Levinson
Directed by Roland Emmerich
as Cop (uncredited)
Directed by Sidney Lumet
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
Helinger
A Beautiful Mind (2001)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Helinger gives Judd Hirsch a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Walter Rand
The Best You Can (2025)
Performance score7.4
The Best You Can asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Walter Rand is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Uncle Boris
The Fabelmans (2022)
Performance score7.4
The Fabelmans asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Uncle Boris is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Julius Levinson
Independence Day (1996)
Performance score7.2
Independence Day asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Julius Levinson 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 Helinger
Start here. A Beautiful Mind is the clearest statement of what Judd Hirsch does — accessible, 135 minutes, and rated 8.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Judd 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.
Serpico (1973)
Keeps the drama register of A Beautiful Mind but asks for a colder reading of it.
Independence Day (1996)
A deliberate change of key after Serpico — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Fabelmans (2022)
A deliberate change of key after Independence Day — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Best You Can (2025)
Keeps the drama register of The Fabelmans but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Roland Emmerich
Director
2 films together
Notably Independence Day
Sidney Lumet
Director
1 film together
Notably Serpico
Ron Howard
Director
1 film together
Notably A Beautiful Mind
Brett Ratner
Director
1 film together
Notably Tower Heist
Paolo Sorrentino
Director
1 film together
Notably This Must Be the Place
James Bobin
Director
1 film together
Notably The Muppets
Noah Baumbach
Director
1 film together
Notably The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
Benny Safdie
Director
1 film together
Notably Uncut Gems
Steven Spielberg
Director
1 film together
Notably The Fabelmans
Michael J. Weithorn
Director
1 film together
Notably The Best You Can
Matthew Shear
Director
1 film together
Notably Fantasy Life
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Roland Emmerich
Director
2 films together · 6.3 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Independence DayRon Howard
Director
1 film together · 8.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Beautiful MindSteven Spielberg
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The FabelmansSidney Lumet
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SerpicoBenny Safdie
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Uncut GemsMichael J. Weithorn
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Best You CanPaolo Sorrentino
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
This Must Be the PlaceJames Bobin
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The MuppetsNoah Baumbach
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)Matthew Shear
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fantasy LifeBrett Ratner
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Tower HeistSix 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
A Beautiful Mind
as Helinger
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
A Beautiful Mind
as Helinger
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
A Beautiful Mind
as Helinger
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Serpico
as Cop (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
A Beautiful Mind
as Helinger
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. Judd Hirsch 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
53 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
10 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
A Beautiful Mind
as Helinger
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Uncut Gems
as Gooey
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
A Beautiful Mind
as Helinger
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Uncut Gems
as Gooey
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Independence Day
as Julius Levinson
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Independence Day
as Julius Levinson
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Best You Can
as Walter Rand
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Independence Day
as Julius Levinson
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
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Reference
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