Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#12127
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Matthew Settle represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 28 years in, and Matthew is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Matthew Settle appears in 5 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Matthew. U-571 is the clearest case: a film rated 6.6 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, quiet performance, transformation. 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 Julia Fowler, Callie Khouri, Jonathan Mostow and others, Matthew Settle 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.
U-571 (2000) as Ens. Keith Larson · Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002) as Jack · I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998) as Will Benson
Career snapshot
Ranked #12127 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
5
1998–2026
Career length
28 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.6
U-571
Average Nutevio score
4.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
6.5
U-571
Most frequent director
Julia Fowler
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Julia Fowler
Most common genre
Horror
2 titles
Average runtime
1h 49m
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
6.3 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, U-571 — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.3
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.3
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. I Still Know What You Did Last Summer.
Most productive era
2000s
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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.11 film | — | — |
| Action | — | 6.61 film | — | — |
| Thriller | 5.71 film | — | — | — |
| Comedy | — | 6.11 film | — | — |
| Horror | 5.71 film | — | 5.11 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1998I Still Know What You Did Last Summer
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Will Benson.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2000U-571
6.6 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
The current state of the argument, as Reeves.
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 Ens. Keith Larson
Directed by Jonathan Mostow
as Will Benson
Directed by Danny Cannon
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
Ens. Keith Larson
U-571 (2000)
Performance score6.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Ens. Keith Larson gives Matthew Settle a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Reeves
Student Film: The Movie (2026)
Performance score6.5
Student Film: The Movie asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Reeves is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Anthony Morris
Ouija (2014)
Performance score6.5
Ouija asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Anthony Morris is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Jack
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002)
Performance score6.5
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Jack 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 Ens. Keith Larson
Start here. U-571 is the clearest statement of what Matthew Settle does — accessible, 116 minutes, and rated 6.6 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.
I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998)
A deliberate change of key after U-571 — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002)
A deliberate change of key after I Still Know What You Did Last Summer — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Ouija (2014)
A deliberate change of key after Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Student Film: The Movie (2026)
A deliberate change of key after Ouija — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Danny Cannon
Director
1 film together
Notably I Still Know What You Did Last Summer
Jonathan Mostow
Director
1 film together
Notably U-571
Callie Khouri
Director
1 film together
Notably Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
Julia Fowler
Director
1 film together
Notably Student Film: The Movie
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Jonathan Mostow
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
U-571Callie Khouri
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya SisterhoodDanny Cannon
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
I Still Know What You Did Last SummerJulia Fowler
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Student Film: The MovieSix 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
U-571
as Ens. Keith Larson
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
as Jack
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
U-571
as Ens. Keith Larson
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
U-571
as Ens. Keith Larson
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
U-571
as Ens. Keith Larson
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 Settle 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
28 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.
Horror Legend
Awarded
2 catalogue titles in horror, 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
U-571
as Ens. Keith Larson
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
I Still Know What You Did Last Summer
as Will Benson
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
as Jack
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
I Still Know What You Did Last Summer
as Will Benson
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
U-571
as Ens. Keith Larson
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
U-571
as Ens. Keith Larson
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
U-571
as Ens. Keith Larson
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
I Still Know What You Did Last Summer
as Will Benson
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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