Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#11650
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Kevin McNulty represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 36 years in, and Kevin is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Kevin McNulty appears in 14 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Kevin. Lockbox is the clearest case: a film rated 6.9 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 horror, fantasy, thriller. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Daniel Stamm, Jem Garrard, Riley Davis and others, Kevin McNulty 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.
Lockbox (2026) as Father Caldwell · R.L. Stine's Pumpkinhead (2025) as Farmer Palmer · Bottled with Love (2019) as Earl Everson
Career snapshot
Ranked #11650 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
14
1990–2026
Career length
36 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.9
Lockbox
Average Nutevio score
5.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
6.9
Lockbox
Most frequent director
Tim Story
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Tim Story
Most common genre
Action
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 29m
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
2010s
6.4 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Kingsway, Bottled with Love — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.4
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.4
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. The NeverEnding Story III, Timecop, Intersection.
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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 5.11 film | — | 6.01 film | 0.01 film |
| Action | 6.01 film | 5.64 films | — | — |
| Thriller | 6.01 film | 5.51 film | — | 6.41 film |
| Comedy | 5.32 films | 5.21 film | 6.01 film | — |
| Crime | — | 5.32 films | — | — |
| Romance | 5.72 films | — | 6.81 film | — |
| Horror | — | 5.51 film | — | 6.73 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1990Bird on a Wire
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Brad.
Career peak
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance · Most recent film
2026Lockbox
6.9 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. The current state of the argument, as Father Caldwell.
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.
14 of 14 films
as Father Caldwell
Directed by Daniel Stamm
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
Farmer Palmer
R.L. Stine's Pumpkinhead (2025)
Performance score7.0
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Farmer Palmer gives Kevin McNulty a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Father Caldwell
Lockbox (2026)
Performance score6.8
Lockbox asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Father Caldwell is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Earl Everson
Bottled with Love (2019)
Performance score6.7
Bottled with Love asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Earl Everson is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Neville
Lowlifes (2024)
Performance score6.5
Lowlifes asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Neville 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 Farmer Palmer
Start here. R.L. Stine's Pumpkinhead is the clearest statement of what Kevin McNulty does — accessible, 91 minutes, and rated 6.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Kevin 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.
Bottled with Love (2019)
A deliberate change of key after R.L. Stine's Pumpkinhead — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Lowlifes (2024)
Same director as Bottled with Love, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Attendance (2024)
A deliberate change of key after Lowlifes — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Lockbox (2026)
A deliberate change of key after Attendance — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Tim Story
Director
2 films together
Notably Fantastic Four
John Badham
Director
1 film together
Notably Bird on a Wire
Mark Rydell
Director
1 film together
Notably Intersection
Peter Hyams
Director
1 film together
Notably Timecop
Peter MacDonald
Director
1 film together
Notably The NeverEnding Story III
David R. Ellis
Director
1 film together
Notably Snakes on a Plane
Les Mayfield
Director
1 film together
Notably Code Name: The Cleaner
Riley Davis
Director
1 film together
Notably Attendance
Jem Garrard
Director
1 film together
Notably R.L. Stine's Pumpkinhead
Daniel Stamm
Director
1 film together
Notably Lockbox
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Tim Story
Director
2 films together · 5.8 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Fantastic FourDaniel Stamm
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
LockboxJem Garrard
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
R.L. Stine's PumpkinheadJohn 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 WirePeter Hyams
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
TimecopDavid R. Ellis
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Snakes on a PlaneLes Mayfield
Director
1 film together · 5.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Code Name: The CleanerMark Rydell
Director
1 film together · 5.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
IntersectionPeter MacDonald
Director
1 film together · 4.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The NeverEnding Story IIIRiley Davis
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
AttendanceSix 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
Lockbox
as Father Caldwell
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Intersection
as Developer
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Lockbox
as Father Caldwell
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Snakes on a Plane
as Emmett Bradley
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
R.L. Stine's Pumpkinhead
as Farmer Palmer
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. Kevin McNulty 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
36 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.
Action Legend
Awarded
5 catalogue titles in action, 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
R.L. Stine's Pumpkinhead
as Farmer Palmer
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Lockbox
as Father Caldwell
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Intersection
as Developer
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
R.L. Stine's Pumpkinhead
as Farmer Palmer
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Fantastic Four
as Jimmy O'Hoolihan
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
as Baxter Building Doorman
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Kingsway
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Fantastic Four
as Jimmy O'Hoolihan
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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