Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#8882
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
L.Q. Jones represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 50 years in, and L.Q. is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
L.Q. Jones appears in 13 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without L.Q.. Casino 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, drama. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for comedy, music, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Robert Altman, Martin Campbell, Lee Tamahori and others, L.Q. Jones 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.
Casino (1995) as Pat Webb · The Wild Bunch (1969) as T.C · The Edge (1997) as Styles
Career snapshot
Ranked #8882 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
13
1956–2006
Career length
50 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.0
Casino
Average Nutevio score
6.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.0
Casino
Most frequent director
Sam Peckinpah
5 films together
Longest collaboration
5×
With Sam Peckinpah
Most common genre
Drama
8 titles
Average runtime
2h 6m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.1
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
1990s
7.2 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. The Mask of Zorro, The Edge, Casino — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
7.2
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
7.1
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1950s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Warlock, The Young Lions, Love Me Tender.
Most productive era
1960s
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 | 1950s | 1960s | 1970s | 1990s | 2000s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.42 films | 6.82 films | 6.91 film | 7.52 films | 6.31 film |
| Action | 6.61 film | — | 6.71 film | 6.82 films | — |
| Comedy | — | — | 6.71 film | — | 6.31 film |
| Crime | — | — | — | 8.01 film | — |
| Romance | 6.31 film | — | — | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1956Love Me Tender
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Pardee Fleming (uncredited).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1995Casino
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
The current state of the argument, as Chuck Akers.
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
as Pat Webb
Directed by Martin Scorsese
as Styles
Directed by Lee Tamahori
as Three-Fingered Jack
Directed by Martin Campbell
as Taggart
Directed by Sam Peckinpah
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
Pat Webb
Casino (1995)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Pat Webb gives L.Q. Jones a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
T.C
The Wild Bunch (1969)
Performance score7.2
The Wild Bunch asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. T.C is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Styles
The Edge (1997)
Performance score7.1
The Edge asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Styles is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Three-Fingered Jack
The Mask of Zorro (1998)
Performance score6.9
The Mask of Zorro asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Three-Fingered Jack 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 Pat Webb
Start here. Casino is the clearest statement of what L.Q. Jones does — accessible, 179 minutes, and rated 8.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet L.Q. 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.
The Wild Bunch (1969)
A deliberate change of key after Casino — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970)
Same director as The Wild Bunch, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
The Edge (1997)
Keeps the action register of The Ballad of Cable Hogue but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Mask of Zorro (1998)
Keeps the action register of The Edge but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Sam Peckinpah
Director
5 films together
Notably The Wild Bunch
Edward Dmytryk
Director
2 films together
Notably Warlock
Robert D. Webb
Director
1 film together
Notably Love Me Tender
Ted Post
Director
1 film together
Notably Hang 'em High
Martin Scorsese
Director
1 film together
Notably Casino
Lee Tamahori
Director
1 film together
Notably The Edge
Martin Campbell
Director
1 film together
Notably The Mask of Zorro
Robert Altman
Director
1 film together
Notably A Prairie Home Companion
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Sam Peckinpah
Director
5 films together · 6.9 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 5 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The Wild BunchEdward Dmytryk
Director
2 films together · 6.6 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
WarlockMartin Scorsese
Director
1 film together · 8.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
CasinoLee Tamahori
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The EdgeTed Post
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hang 'em HighMartin Campbell
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 Mask of ZorroRobert Altman
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Prairie Home CompanionRobert D. Webb
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Love Me TenderSix 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
Casino
as Pat Webb
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Love Me Tender
as Pardee Fleming (uncredited)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Casino
as Pat Webb
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Warlock
as Fen Jiggs (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Casino
as Pat Webb
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. L.Q. Jones 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
50 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
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
Casino
as Pat Webb
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Casino
as Pat Webb
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Love Me Tender
as Pardee Fleming (uncredited)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Casino
as Pat Webb
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Edge
as Styles
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Mask of Zorro
as Three-Fingered Jack
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
A Prairie Home Companion
as Chuck Akers
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Mask of Zorro
as Three-Fingered Jack
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
Community
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Reference
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