Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#11722
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Ken Camroux-Taylor represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 31 years in, and Ken is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Ken Camroux-Taylor appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Ken. This Boy's Life is the clearest case: a film rated 7.1 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, tv movie. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Allan Harmon, Dennis Dugan, John Frankenheimer and others, Ken Camroux-Taylor 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.
This Boy's Life (1993) as Second Place Shooter · Just for the Summer (2020) as George · Happy Gilmore (1996) as Coach
Career snapshot
Ranked #11722 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
1989–2020
Career length
31 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.1
This Boy's Life
Average Nutevio score
6.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.1
This Boy's Life
Most frequent director
Dennis Dugan
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Dennis Dugan
Most common genre
Romance
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 40m
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
6.5
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
2020s
6.7 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Just for the Summer — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
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
2020s
6.7
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. The Trial of the Incredible Hulk.
Most productive era
1990s
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 | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.41 film | 6.62 films | — | — | 6.71 film |
| Action | 6.41 film | — | 5.71 film | — | — |
| Thriller | — | 6.11 film | 5.71 film | — | — |
| Comedy | — | 6.52 films | 5.81 film | — | 6.71 film |
| Crime | — | 6.11 film | 5.82 films | — | — |
| Romance | — | 6.21 film | 5.81 film | 6.51 film | 6.71 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1989The Trial of the Incredible Hulk
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Crime Boss #1.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1993This Boy's Life
7.1 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
The current state of the argument, as George.
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.
9 of 9 films
as Second Place Shooter
Directed by Michael Caton-Jones
as George
Directed by Unknown
as George Eckland
Directed by Allan Harmon
as Warren
Directed by Dennis Dugan
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
Second Place Shooter
This Boy's Life (1993)
Performance score7.0
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Second Place Shooter gives Ken Camroux-Taylor a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
George
Just for the Summer (2020)
Performance score6.6
Just for the Summer asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. George is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Coach
Happy Gilmore (1996)
Performance score6.6
Happy Gilmore asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Coach is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
George Eckland
Christmas Under the Stars (2019)
Performance score6.5
Christmas Under the Stars asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. George Eckland 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 Second Place Shooter
Start here. This Boy's Life is the clearest statement of what Ken Camroux-Taylor does — accessible, 115 minutes, and rated 7.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Ken 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.
Happy Gilmore (1996)
A deliberate change of key after This Boy's Life — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Saving Silverman (2001)
Same director as Happy Gilmore, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Christmas Under the Stars (2019)
Keeps the romance register of Saving Silverman but asks for a colder reading of it.
Just for the Summer (2020)
Keeps the romance register of Christmas Under the Stars but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Dennis Dugan
Director
2 films together
Notably Happy Gilmore
Bill Bixby
Director
1 film together
Notably The Trial of the Incredible Hulk
John Badham
Director
1 film together
Notably Bird on a Wire
Bruce Robinson
Director
1 film together
Notably Jennifer Eight
Michael Caton-Jones
Director
1 film together
Notably This Boy's Life
John Frankenheimer
Director
1 film together
Notably Reindeer Games
Allan Harmon
Director
1 film together
Notably Christmas Under the Stars
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Dennis Dugan
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
Happy GilmoreMichael Caton-Jones
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
This Boy's LifeAllan Harmon
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Christmas Under the StarsBill Bixby
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Trial of the Incredible HulkJohn Badham
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Bird on a WireBruce Robinson
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Jennifer EightJohn Frankenheimer
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Reindeer GamesSix 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
This Boy's Life
as Second Place Shooter
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Just for the Summer
as George
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
This Boy's Life
as Second Place Shooter
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
This Boy's Life
as Second Place Shooter
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
This Boy's Life
as Second Place Shooter
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. Ken Camroux-Taylor 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
31 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.
Romance Legend
Awarded
4 catalogue titles in romance, 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
This Boy's Life
as Second Place Shooter
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Jennifer Eight
as Pathologist
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Just for the Summer
as George
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Jennifer Eight
as Pathologist
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Trial of the Incredible Hulk
as Crime Boss #1
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Trial of the Incredible Hulk
as Crime Boss #1
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Just for the Summer
as George
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Just for the Summer
as George
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Reference
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