Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#25931
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Martin Clunes represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 33 years in, and Martin is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Martin Clunes appears in 5 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Martin. Shakespeare in Love 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 quiet performance, emotional range, drama. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, drama, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Emerald Fennell, Nick Moorcroft, John Madden and others, Martin Clunes 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.
Shakespeare in Love (1998) as Richard Burbage · "Wuthering Heights" (2026) as Mr. Earnshaw · Swing Kids (1993) as Bannführer
Career snapshot
Ranked #25931 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
5
1993–2026
Career length
33 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.9
Shakespeare in Love
Average Nutevio score
6.3
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
6.8
Shakespeare in Love
Most frequent director
Emerald Fennell
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Emerald Fennell
Most common genre
Drama
5 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
6.5
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
6.7 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Shakespeare in Love, Swing Kids — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
6.7
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
6.7
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. Shakespeare in Love, Swing Kids.
Most productive era
2020s
3 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 | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.72 films | 6.03 films |
| Comedy | 6.91 film | 5.61 film |
| Romance | 6.91 film | 6.71 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1993Swing Kids
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Bannführer.
Highest rated performance
6.9 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2026Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards
The current state of the argument, as Huw Edwards.
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.
5 of 5 films
as Mr. Earnshaw
Directed by Emerald Fennell
as Richard Burbage
Directed by John Madden
as Mick
Directed by Nick Moorcroft
as Bannführer
Directed by Thomas Carter
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
Mr. Earnshaw
"Wuthering Heights" (2026)
Performance score6.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Mr. Earnshaw gives Martin Clunes a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Richard Burbage
Shakespeare in Love (1998)
Performance score6.8
Shakespeare in Love asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Richard Burbage is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Mick
Mother's Pride (2026)
Performance score6.5
Mother's Pride asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mick is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Huw Edwards
Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards (2026)
Performance score6.5
Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Huw Edwards 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 Mr. Earnshaw
Start here. "Wuthering Heights" is the clearest statement of what Martin Clunes does — accessible, 137 minutes, and rated 6.7 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Martin 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.
Swing Kids (1993)
Keeps the drama register of "Wuthering Heights" but asks for a colder reading of it.
Shakespeare in Love (1998)
Keeps the drama register of Swing Kids but asks for a colder reading of it.
Mother's Pride (2026)
Keeps the comedy register of Shakespeare in Love but asks for a colder reading of it.
Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards (2026)
Keeps the drama register of Mother's Pride but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Thomas Carter
Director
1 film together
Notably Swing Kids
John Madden
Director
1 film together
Notably Shakespeare in Love
Nick Moorcroft
Director
1 film together
Notably Mother's Pride
Emerald Fennell
Director
1 film together
Notably "Wuthering Heights"
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
John Madden
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Shakespeare in LoveEmerald Fennell
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
"Wuthering Heights"Thomas Carter
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Swing KidsNick Moorcroft
Director
1 film together · 5.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mother's PrideSix 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
Shakespeare in Love
as Richard Burbage
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Shakespeare in Love
as Richard Burbage
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Shakespeare in Love
as Richard Burbage
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Shakespeare in Love
as Richard Burbage
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
"Wuthering Heights"
as Mr. Earnshaw
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. Martin Clunes 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
33 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
5 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
Shakespeare in Love
as Richard Burbage
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Shakespeare in Love
as Richard Burbage
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
"Wuthering Heights"
as Mr. Earnshaw
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
"Wuthering Heights"
as Mr. Earnshaw
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Shakespeare in Love
as Richard Burbage
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
"Wuthering Heights"
as Mr. Earnshaw
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Shakespeare in Love
as Richard Burbage
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Shakespeare in Love
as Richard Burbage
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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