Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#22689
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
King Orba represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 27 years in, and King is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
King Orba appears in 13 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without King. 25th Hour is the clearest case: a film rated 7.2 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 western, comedy, crime. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Ari Aster, Adam Rifkin, Matt Shapira and others, King Orba 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.
25th Hour (2002) as Bartender (uncredited) · 12 Mighty Orphans (2021) as Remmert · Eddington (2025) as Warren
Career snapshot
Ranked #22689 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
13
1998–2025
Career length
27 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.2
25th Hour
Average Nutevio score
6.3
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
25th Hour
Most frequent director
Ari Aster
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Ari Aster
Most common genre
Drama
8 titles
Average runtime
1h 51m
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
7.2 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. 25th Hour — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
7.2
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
7.3
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 Newton Boys.
Most productive era
2020s
8 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 | 6.21 film | 7.21 film | 6.41 film | 6.35 films |
| Action | 6.21 film | — | 6.02 films | 6.52 films |
| Thriller | — | — | 6.41 film | 5.92 films |
| Comedy | — | — | 6.02 films | 6.02 films |
| Crime | 6.21 film | 7.21 film | 6.41 film | 6.13 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1998The Newton Boys
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Railroad Hobo (uncredited).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
200225th Hour
7.2 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 Chet Rivers.
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.
13 of 13 films
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
Bartender (uncredited)
25th Hour (2002)
Performance score7.1
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Bartender (uncredited) gives King Orba a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Remmert
12 Mighty Orphans (2021)
Performance score6.7
12 Mighty Orphans asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Remmert is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Warren
Eddington (2025)
Performance score6.6
Eddington asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Warren is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Ump L Wood
You Gotta Believe (2024)
Performance score6.6
You Gotta Believe asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Ump L Wood 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 Bartender (uncredited)
Start here. 25th Hour is the clearest statement of what King Orba does — accessible, 135 minutes, and rated 7.2 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet King 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.
12 Mighty Orphans (2021)
Keeps the drama register of 25th Hour but asks for a colder reading of it.
You Gotta Believe (2024)
Same director as 12 Mighty Orphans, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Eddington (2025)
A deliberate change of key after You Gotta Believe — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Last Train to Fortune (2025)
Keeps the western register of Eddington but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Richard Linklater
Director
1 film together
Notably The Newton Boys
Spike Lee
Director
1 film together
Notably 25th Hour
James Mangold
Director
1 film together
Notably Knight and Day
Frank Coraci
Director
1 film together
Notably The Ridiculous 6
Dan Gilroy
Director
1 film together
Notably Roman J. Israel, Esq.
Matt Shapira
Director
1 film together
Notably The Swing of Things
Adam Rifkin
Director
1 film together
Notably Last Train to Fortune
Ari Aster
Director
1 film together
Notably Eddington
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Spike Lee
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
25th HourAri Aster
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
EddingtonDan Gilroy
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Roman J. Israel, Esq.James Mangold
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Knight and DayAdam Rifkin
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Last Train to FortuneRichard Linklater
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Newton BoysFrank Coraci
Director
1 film together · 5.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Ridiculous 6Matt Shapira
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Swing of ThingsSix 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
25th Hour
as Bartender (uncredited)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
You Gotta Believe
as Ump L Wood
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
25th Hour
as Bartender (uncredited)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
25th Hour
as Bartender (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
25th Hour
as Bartender (uncredited)
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. King Orba 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
27 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
8 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
25th Hour
as Bartender (uncredited)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
25th Hour
as Bartender (uncredited)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
You Gotta Believe
as Ump L Wood
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Cleaner
as Buck Enderly
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
12 Mighty Orphans
as Remmert
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Ridiculous 6
as Nugget Bouncer #2
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Last Train to Fortune
as Chet Rivers
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Private Property
as The Mechanic
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Morgan Freeman
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Robert Downey Jr.
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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