Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#26977
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Lou Wagner represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 50 years in, and Lou is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Lou Wagner appears in 4 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Lou. Planet of the Apes is the clearest case: a film rated 7.6 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, transformation, screen presence. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for mystery, action, science fiction. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with J. Lee Thompson, Ted Post, Franklin J. Schaffner, Lou Wagner 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.
Planet of the Apes (1968) as Lucius · Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) as Busboy · Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) as Luicius
Career snapshot
Ranked #26977 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
4
1968–2018
Career length
50 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.6
Planet of the Apes
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.7
Planet of the Apes
Most frequent director
J. Lee Thompson
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With J. Lee Thompson
Most common genre
Science Fiction
3 titles
Average runtime
1h 34m
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
6.7
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
1960s
7.6 average MV
The 1960s are where the work and the material meet. Planet of the Apes — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1960s
7.6
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1960s
7.7
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1960s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Planet of the Apes.
Most productive era
1970s
2 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 | 1960s | 1970s | 2010s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.61 film | — | — |
| Action | 7.61 film | 6.31 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Lucius. 7.6 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
2018Clyde Cooper
The current state of the argument, as Frank Barrett.
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.
4 of 4 films
as Lucius
Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner
as Frank Barrett
Directed by Unknown
as Busboy
Directed by J. Lee Thompson
as Luicius
Directed by Ted Post
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
Lucius
Planet of the Apes (1968)
Performance score7.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Lucius gives Lou Wagner a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Frank Barrett
Clyde Cooper (2018)
Performance score6.5
Clyde Cooper asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Frank Barrett is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Busboy
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)
Performance score6.5
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Busboy is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Luicius
Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970)
Performance score6.5
Beneath the Planet of the Apes asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Luicius 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 Lucius
Start here. Planet of the Apes is the clearest statement of what Lou Wagner does — accessible, 112 minutes, and rated 7.6 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Lou 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.
Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970)
Keeps the science fiction register of Planet of the Apes but asks for a colder reading of it.
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)
Keeps the science fiction register of Beneath the Planet of the Apes but asks for a colder reading of it.
Clyde Cooper (2018)
A deliberate change of key after Conquest of the Planet of the Apes — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Franklin J. Schaffner
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Planet of the ApesJ. Lee Thompson
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Conquest of the Planet of the ApesTed Post
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Beneath the Planet of the ApesSix 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
Planet of the Apes
as Lucius
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Planet of the Apes
as Lucius
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Planet of the Apes
as Lucius
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Beneath the Planet of the Apes
as Luicius
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Planet of the Apes
as Lucius
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. Lou Wagner 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.
Science Fiction Legend
Awarded
3 catalogue titles in science fiction, 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
Planet of the Apes
as Lucius
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Planet of the Apes
as Lucius
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Planet of the Apes
as Lucius
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Beneath the Planet of the Apes
as Luicius
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Planet of the Apes
as Lucius
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Planet of the Apes
as Lucius
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Planet of the Apes
as Lucius
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Beneath the Planet of the Apes
as Luicius
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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