Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#25370
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Matt Holland 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.
Matt Holland appears in 11 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Matt. The Terminal is the clearest case: a film rated 7.5 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 horror, comedy, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Azazel Jacobs, Charles Binamé, Duncan Jones and others, Matt Holland 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.
The Terminal (2004) as Ramada Inn Clerk · Source Code (2011) as Lock Tech · The Aviator (2004) as Hughes' Staff Person
Career snapshot
Ranked #25370 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
11
2002–2023
Career length
21 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.5
The Terminal
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.4
The Terminal
Most frequent director
Azazel Jacobs
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Azazel Jacobs
Most common genre
Drama
8 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
6.5
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
2010s
6.9 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Elephant Song, Upside Down, Source Code — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.9
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.9
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. I'm Not There, The Terminal, The Aviator.
Most productive era
2000s
5 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 | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.94 films | 6.72 films | 5.92 films |
| Action | 6.41 film | — | — |
| Thriller | 6.52 films | 7.31 film | — |
| Comedy | 7.51 film | — | 5.61 film |
| Romance | — | 6.31 film | — |
| Horror | — | — | 5.61 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Pickup Truck Owner.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2004The Terminal
7.5 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 Hannibal Benson.
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.
11 of 11 films
as Ramada Inn Clerk
Directed by Steven Spielberg
as Lock Tech
Directed by Duncan Jones
as Hughes' Staff Person
Directed by Martin Scorsese
as Bruce
Directed by Charles Binamé
as Detective Bradley
Directed by David Koepp
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
Ramada Inn Clerk
The Terminal (2004)
Performance score7.3
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Ramada Inn Clerk gives Matt Holland a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Lock Tech
Source Code (2011)
Performance score7.2
Source Code asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Lock Tech is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Hughes' Staff Person
The Aviator (2004)
Performance score7.1
The Aviator asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Hughes' Staff Person is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Bruce
Elephant Song (2015)
Performance score6.9
Elephant Song asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Bruce 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 Ramada Inn Clerk
Start here. The Terminal is the clearest statement of what Matt Holland does — accessible, 128 minutes, and rated 7.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Matt 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 The Terminal but asks for a colder reading of it.
Secret Window (2004)
A deliberate change of key after The Aviator — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Source Code (2011)
Keeps the mystery register of Secret Window but asks for a colder reading of it.
Elephant Song (2015)
Keeps the mystery register of Source Code but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Phil Alden Robinson
Director
1 film together
Notably The Sum of All Fears
David Koepp
Director
1 film together
Notably Secret Window
Martin Scorsese
Director
1 film together
Notably The Aviator
Steven Spielberg
Director
1 film together
Notably The Terminal
Todd Haynes
Director
1 film together
Notably I'm Not There
Duncan Jones
Director
1 film together
Notably Source Code
Charles Binamé
Director
1 film together
Notably Elephant Song
Azazel Jacobs
Director
1 film together
Notably French Exit
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Steven Spielberg
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The TerminalDuncan Jones
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Source CodeMartin 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 AviatorCharles Binamé
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Elephant SongDavid Koepp
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Secret WindowTodd Haynes
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
I'm Not TherePhil Alden Robinson
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Sum of All FearsAzazel Jacobs
Director
1 film together · 5.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
French ExitSix 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
The Terminal
as Ramada Inn Clerk
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
I'm Not There
as Reporter #3
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
The Terminal
as Ramada Inn Clerk
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Sum of All Fears
as Pickup Truck Owner
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Terminal
as Ramada Inn Clerk
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. Matt Holland 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
21 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
Source Code
as Lock Tech
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Source Code
as Lock Tech
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Upside Down
as Security Guard #2
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Secret Window
as Detective Bradley
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Terminal
as Ramada Inn Clerk
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Sum of All Fears
as Pickup Truck Owner
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
I'm Not There
as Reporter #3
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Terminal
as Ramada Inn Clerk
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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