Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#4944
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Maury Sterling represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 30 years in, and Maury is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Maury Sterling appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Maury. Batman: Hush is the clearest case: a film rated 7.2 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, fantasy, animation. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Kang Hei Chul, Rob Thomas, Jennifer Yuh Nelson and others, Maury Sterling 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.
Batman: Hush (2019) as Thomas Elliot (voice) · Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011) as Wolf Soldier 3 (voice) · The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep (2025) as Berat (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #4944 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
1995–2025
Career length
30 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.2
Batman: Hush
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.2
Batman: Hush
Most frequent director
Joe Carnahan
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Joe Carnahan
Most common genre
Action
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 45m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.9
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
6.6
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
6.8 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Batman: Hush, Veronica Mars, Kung Fu Panda 2 — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.8
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.8
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. Outbreak.
Most productive era
2000s
4 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 | 6.61 film | 6.41 film | 6.61 film | — |
| Action | 6.61 film | 6.32 films | 6.93 films | 6.81 film |
| Thriller | 6.61 film | 6.32 films | — | — |
| Comedy | — | 6.02 films | 6.73 films | — |
| Crime | — | 6.51 film | 6.73 films | — |
| Romance | — | 5.41 film | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1995Outbreak
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Sandman One.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2019Batman: Hush
7.2 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
2025The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep
The current state of the argument, as Berat (voice).
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.
10 of 10 films
as Thomas Elliot (voice)
Directed by Unknown
as Wolf Soldier 3 (voice)
Directed by Jennifer Yuh Nelson
as Berat (voice)
Directed by Kang Hei Chul
as Deputy Lyles
Directed by Rob Thomas
as Sandman One
Directed by Wolfgang Petersen
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
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The defining work
#1
Thomas Elliot (voice)
Batman: Hush (2019)
Performance score7.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Thomas Elliot (voice) gives Maury Sterling a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Wolf Soldier 3 (voice)
Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011)
Performance score7.0
Kung Fu Panda 2 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Wolf Soldier 3 (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Berat (voice)
The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep (2025)
Performance score6.7
The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Berat (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Deputy Lyles
Veronica Mars (2014)
Performance score6.6
Veronica Mars asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Deputy Lyles 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 Thomas Elliot (voice)
Start here. Batman: Hush is the clearest statement of what Maury Sterling does — accessible, 82 minutes, and rated 7.2 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Maury 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.
Outbreak (1995)
Keeps the action register of Batman: Hush but asks for a colder reading of it.
Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011)
Keeps the action register of Outbreak but asks for a colder reading of it.
Veronica Mars (2014)
Keeps the comedy register of Kung Fu Panda 2 but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep (2025)
A deliberate change of key after Veronica Mars — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Joe Carnahan
Director
2 films together
Notably Smokin' Aces
Wolfgang Petersen
Director
1 film together
Notably Outbreak
Gary Fleder
Director
1 film together
Notably Impostor
Gregory Hoblit
Director
1 film together
Notably Hart's War
Raja Gosnell
Director
1 film together
Notably Beverly Hills Chihuahua
Jennifer Yuh Nelson
Director
1 film together
Notably Kung Fu Panda 2
Rob Thomas
Director
1 film together
Notably Veronica Mars
Kang Hei Chul
Director
1 film together
Notably The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Joe Carnahan
Director
2 films together · 6.5 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Smokin' AcesJennifer Yuh Nelson
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Kung Fu Panda 2Kang Hei Chul
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Witcher: Sirens of the DeepRob Thomas
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Veronica MarsWolfgang Petersen
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
OutbreakGregory Hoblit
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hart's WarGary Fleder
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
ImpostorRaja Gosnell
Director
1 film together · 5.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Beverly Hills ChihuahuaSix 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
Outbreak
as Sandman One
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Beverly Hills Chihuahua
as Rafferty
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Batman: Hush
as Thomas Elliot (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Impostor
as Comms Tech
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Batman: Hush
as Thomas Elliot (voice)
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. Maury Sterling 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
30 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.
Action Legend
Awarded
7 catalogue titles in action, 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
Batman: Hush
as Thomas Elliot (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Batman: Hush
as Thomas Elliot (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Beverly Hills Chihuahua
as Rafferty
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Batman: Hush
as Thomas Elliot (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Batman: Hush
as Thomas Elliot (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Batman: Hush
as Thomas Elliot (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Veronica Mars
as Deputy Lyles
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Outbreak
as Sandman One
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Morgan Freeman
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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