Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#21481
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Kent Faulcon represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 26 years in, and Kent is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Kent Faulcon appears in 8 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Kent. American Beauty is the clearest case: a film rated 8.1 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 mystery, horror, tv movie. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Ava DuVernay, Steven Spielberg, Sam Mendes and others, Kent Faulcon 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.
American Beauty (1999) as Sale House Man #3 · Selma (2014) as Sullivan Jackson · Men in Black (1997) as 1st Lt. Jake Jensen
Career snapshot
Ranked #21481 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
8
1995–2021
Career length
26 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.1
American Beauty
Average Nutevio score
6.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.0
American Beauty
Most frequent director
Ava DuVernay
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Ava DuVernay
Most common genre
Thriller
3 titles
Average runtime
1h 49m
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
6.6
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
7.6 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. American Beauty, Men in Black, Die Hard: With a Vengeance — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
7.6
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
7.5
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. American Beauty, Men in Black, Die Hard: With a Vengeance.
Most productive era
1990s
3 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 | 8.11 film | 5.91 film | 7.41 film | — |
| Action | 7.42 films | — | — | — |
| Thriller | 7.41 film | 6.61 film | 6.11 film | — |
| Comedy | 7.41 film | — | — | — |
| Horror | — | — | — | 5.11 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1995Die Hard: With a Vengeance
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Gang Member #3.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1999American Beauty
8.1 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
2021Init!ation
The current state of the argument, as Chief Adam Tahan.
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 Sale House Man #3
Directed by Sam Mendes
as Sullivan Jackson
Directed by Ava DuVernay
as 1st Lt. Jake Jensen
Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld
as Gang Member #3
Directed by John McTiernan
as Soldier
Directed by Steven Spielberg
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
Sale House Man #3
American Beauty (1999)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Sale House Man #3 gives Kent Faulcon a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Sullivan Jackson
Selma (2014)
Performance score7.2
Selma asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Sullivan Jackson is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
1st Lt. Jake Jensen
Men in Black (1997)
Performance score7.2
Men in Black asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. 1st Lt. Jake Jensen is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Gang Member #3
Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995)
Performance score7.2
Die Hard: With a Vengeance asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Gang Member #3 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 Sale House Man #3
Start here. American Beauty is the clearest statement of what Kent Faulcon does — accessible, 122 minutes, and rated 8.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Kent 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.
Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995)
A deliberate change of key after American Beauty — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Men in Black (1997)
Keeps the action register of Die Hard: With a Vengeance but asks for a colder reading of it.
War of the Worlds (2005)
Keeps the science fiction register of Men in Black but asks for a colder reading of it.
Selma (2014)
A deliberate change of key after War of the Worlds — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
John McTiernan
Director
1 film together
Notably Die Hard: With a Vengeance
Barry Sonnenfeld
Director
1 film together
Notably Men in Black
Sam Mendes
Director
1 film together
Notably American Beauty
Steven Spielberg
Director
1 film together
Notably War of the Worlds
Ava DuVernay
Director
1 film together
Notably Selma
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Sam Mendes
Director
1 film together · 8.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
American BeautyAva DuVernay
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SelmaBarry Sonnenfeld
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Men in BlackJohn McTiernan
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Die Hard: With a VengeanceSteven Spielberg
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
War of the WorldsSix 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
American Beauty
as Sale House Man #3
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Selma
as Sullivan Jackson
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
American Beauty
as Sale House Man #3
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
War of the Worlds
as Soldier
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
American Beauty
as Sale House Man #3
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. Kent Faulcon 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
26 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.
Thriller Legend
Awarded
3 catalogue titles in thriller, 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
American Beauty
as Sale House Man #3
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Die Hard: With a Vengeance
as Gang Member #3
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Selma
as Sullivan Jackson
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Solaris
as Patient
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Men in Black
as 1st Lt. Jake Jensen
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Men in Black
as 1st Lt. Jake Jensen
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Selma
as Sullivan Jackson
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Men in Black
as 1st Lt. Jake Jensen
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and drama
Edward Norton
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
Have your say
Community
Which Kent Faulcon performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
Join the conversation
Reference
Continue exploring
Trending performers
Directors they work with
Collections to read next
