Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#6947
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Matthew Cornwell 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.
Matthew Cornwell appears in 17 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Matthew. The Tomorrow War 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 action, science fiction, thriller. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Julius Onah, Jake Kasdan, Mark Mylod and others, Matthew Cornwell 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 Tomorrow War (2021) as Frank · The Menu (2022) as Dale / Coast Guard Officer · Red One (2024) as Aaron Able / Troll
Career snapshot
Ranked #6947 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
17
2011–2025
Career length
14 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.5
The Tomorrow War
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.5
The Tomorrow War
Most frequent director
Julius Onah
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Julius Onah
Most common genre
Comedy
10 titles
Average runtime
1h 54m
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
2020s
7.0 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Captain America: Brave New World, Red One, Reptile — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
7.0
Across 6 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
6.9
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2010s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Venom, Den of Thieves, The Fate of the Furious.
Most productive era
2010s
11 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 | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 5.91 film | 6.82 films |
| Action | 6.93 films | 7.04 films |
| Thriller | 6.92 films | 6.73 films |
| Comedy | 6.08 films | 7.22 films |
| Crime | 6.93 films | 6.71 film |
| Horror | — | 7.21 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2011The Change-Up
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Parks Foreman.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2021The Tomorrow War
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
2025Captain America: Brave New World
The current state of the argument, as Air Force Major.
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.
17 of 17 films
as Frank
Directed by Unknown
as Dale / Coast Guard Officer
Directed by Mark Mylod
as Aaron Able / Troll
Directed by Jake Kasdan
as Willy
Directed by Howard Deutch
as Bank Manager
Directed by Unknown
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
Frank
The Tomorrow War (2021)
Performance score7.3
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Frank gives Matthew Cornwell a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Dale / Coast Guard Officer
The Menu (2022)
Performance score7.1
The Menu asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Dale / Coast Guard Officer is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Aaron Able / Troll
Red One (2024)
Performance score7.0
Red One asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Aaron Able / Troll is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Willy
Buried in Barstow (2022)
Performance score6.9
Buried in Barstow asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Willy 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 Frank
Start here. The Tomorrow War is the clearest statement of what Matthew Cornwell does — accessible, 138 minutes, and rated 7.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Matthew 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.
Den of Thieves (2018)
Same director as The Tomorrow War, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
The Menu (2022)
A deliberate change of key after Den of Thieves — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Buried in Barstow (2022)
A deliberate change of key after The Menu — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Red One (2024)
Keeps the action register of Buried in Barstow but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
David Dobkin
Director
1 film together
Notably The Change-Up
Matthew Weiner
Director
1 film together
Notably Are You Here
Adam McKay
Director
1 film together
Notably Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues
John Francis Daley
Director
1 film together
Notably Vacation
Dan Mazer
Director
1 film together
Notably Dirty Grandpa
Jeffrey Blitz
Director
1 film together
Notably Table 19
Michael Tiddes
Director
1 film together
Notably Naked
F. Gary Gray
Director
1 film together
Notably The Fate of the Furious
Ruben Fleischer
Director
1 film together
Notably Venom
Howard Deutch
Director
1 film together
Notably Buried in Barstow
Mark Mylod
Director
1 film together
Notably The Menu
Jake Kasdan
Director
1 film together
Notably Red One
Julius Onah
Director
1 film together
Notably Captain America: Brave New World
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Mark Mylod
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 MenuJake Kasdan
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Red OneHoward Deutch
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Buried in BarstowF. Gary Gray
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 Fate of the FuriousRuben Fleischer
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
VenomJulius Onah
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Captain America: Brave New WorldJohn Francis Daley
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
VacationDavid Dobkin
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Change-UpAdam McKay
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Anchorman 2: The Legend ContinuesJeffrey Blitz
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Table 19Dan Mazer
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Dirty GrandpaMichael Tiddes
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
NakedMatthew Weiner
Director
1 film together · 5.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Are You HereSix 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 Tomorrow War
as Frank
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Table 19
as Drunk Military Buddy
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 Tomorrow War
as Frank
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Red One
as Aaron Able / Troll
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Tomorrow War
as Frank
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. Matthew Cornwell 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.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
10 catalogue titles in comedy, 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
The Tomorrow War
as Frank
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Den of Thieves
as Bank Manager
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Table 19
as Drunk Military Buddy
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Reptile
as Police Officer #4
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Tomorrow War
as Frank
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Red One
as Aaron Able / Troll
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Red One
as Aaron Able / Troll
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Captain America: Brave New World
as Air Force Major
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Jamie Harris
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Elliot Page
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Christian Bale
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Have your say
Community
Which Matthew Cornwell performance holds up best?
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Reference
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