Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#14515
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Loudon Wainwright III works on versatility rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Loudon Wainwright III appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Loudon. Big Fish is the clearest case: a film rated 7.8 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 crime, drama, history. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Rupert Goold, Judd Apatow, Christopher Guest and others, Loudon Wainwright III 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.
Big Fish (2003) as Beamen · The Aviator (2004) as Cocoanut Grove Vocalist #2 · The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005) as Priest
Career snapshot
Ranked #14515 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
2000–2015
Career length
15 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.8
Big Fish
Average Nutevio score
6.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.8
Big Fish
Most frequent director
Judd Apatow
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Judd Apatow
Most common genre
Drama
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 55m
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
6.3
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
6.4 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. G-Force, Knocked Up, For Your Consideration — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.4
Across 8 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.4
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2000s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. G-Force, Knocked Up, For Your Consideration.
Most productive era
2000s
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 | 2000s | 2010s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.75 films | 6.31 film |
| Action | 5.51 film | — |
| Comedy | 6.16 films | — |
| Crime | — | 6.31 film |
| Romance | 6.33 films | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
200028 Days
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Guitar Guy.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2003Big Fish
7.8 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
2015True Story
The current state of the argument, as Older Man.
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.
9 of 9 films
as Beamen
Directed by Tim Burton
as Cocoanut Grove Vocalist #2
Directed by Martin Scorsese
as Older Man
Directed by Rupert Goold
as Dr. Howard
Directed by Judd Apatow
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
Beamen
Big Fish (2003)
Performance score7.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Beamen gives Loudon Wainwright III a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Cocoanut Grove Vocalist #2
The Aviator (2004)
Performance score7.1
The Aviator asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Cocoanut Grove Vocalist #2 is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Older Man
True Story (2015)
Performance score6.5
True Story asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Older Man is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Grandpa Goodman
G-Force (2009)
Performance score6.5
G-Force asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Grandpa Goodman 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 Beamen
Start here. Big Fish is the clearest statement of what Loudon Wainwright III does — accessible, 125 minutes, and rated 7.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Loudon 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 Aviator (2004)
Keeps the drama register of Big Fish but asks for a colder reading of it.
Knocked Up (2007)
Keeps the drama register of The Aviator but asks for a colder reading of it.
G-Force (2009)
Keeps the comedy register of Knocked Up but asks for a colder reading of it.
True Story (2015)
A deliberate change of key after G-Force — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Judd Apatow
Director
2 films together
Notably The 40 Year Old Virgin
Betty Thomas
Director
1 film together
Notably 28 Days
Tim Burton
Director
1 film together
Notably Big Fish
Martin Scorsese
Director
1 film together
Notably The Aviator
Cameron Crowe
Director
1 film together
Notably Elizabethtown
Christopher Guest
Director
1 film together
Notably For Your Consideration
Rupert Goold
Director
1 film together
Notably True Story
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Judd Apatow
Director
2 films together · 6.3 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The 40 Year Old VirginTim Burton
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Big FishMartin Scorsese
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The AviatorRupert Goold
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
True StoryCameron Crowe
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
ElizabethtownBetty Thomas
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
28 DaysChristopher Guest
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
For Your ConsiderationSix 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
Big Fish
as Beamen
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Big Fish
as Beamen
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Big Fish
as Beamen
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
For Your Consideration
as Nominee Ben Connelly
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Big Fish
as Beamen
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. Loudon Wainwright III 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.
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
6 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
Big Fish
as Beamen
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Big Fish
as Beamen
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Big Fish
as Beamen
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Big Fish
as Beamen
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Big Fish
as Beamen
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
G-Force
as Grandpa Goodman
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Knocked Up
as Dr. Howard
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
For Your Consideration
as Nominee Ben Connelly
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Matt Damon
Works with the same directors — Martin Scorsese
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: family and comedy
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: family and comedy
Leonardo DiCaprio
Works with the same directors — Martin Scorsese
Robert De Niro
Works with the same directors — Martin Scorsese
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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