Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3459
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Max Wrottesley 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.
Max Wrottesley appears in 7 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Max. Guardians of the Galaxy is the clearest case: a film rated 8.1 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, thriller, war. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with James Nunn, John Andreas Andersen, James Gunn and others, Max Wrottesley 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.
Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) as Sacrificed Nova Corpsman · Captain Phillips (2013) as Sub Lieutenant P. Ashton (uncredited) · Number 24 (2024) as MI5 Officer
Career snapshot
Ranked #3459 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
7
2011–2025
Career length
14 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.1
Guardians of the Galaxy
Average Nutevio score
6.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.9
Guardians of the Galaxy
Most frequent director
James Nunn
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With James Nunn
Most common genre
Drama
5 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
6.9
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
6.5
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
7.1 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain Phillips, Diana — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.1
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
7.1
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. Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain Phillips, Diana.
Most productive era
2010s
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 | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.83 films | 6.62 films |
| Action | 7.82 films | 6.11 film |
| Thriller | 7.51 film | 6.11 film |
| Crime | — | 6.01 film |
| Romance | 5.61 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2011Hugo
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Train Engineer.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
8.1 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
2025Wildcat
The current state of the argument, as Tony.
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.
7 of 7 films
as Sacrificed Nova Corpsman
Directed by James Gunn
as Sub Lieutenant P. Ashton (uncredited)
Directed by Paul Greengrass
as MI5 Officer
Directed by John Andreas Andersen
as Train Engineer
Directed by Martin Scorsese
as Tony
Directed by James Nunn
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
Sacrificed Nova Corpsman
Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Sacrificed Nova Corpsman gives Max Wrottesley a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Sub Lieutenant P. Ashton (uncredited)
Captain Phillips (2013)
Performance score7.3
Captain Phillips asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Sub Lieutenant P. Ashton (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
MI5 Officer
Number 24 (2024)
Performance score7.1
Number 24 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. MI5 Officer is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Train Engineer
Hugo (2011)
Performance score7.1
Hugo asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Train Engineer 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 Sacrificed Nova Corpsman
Start here. Guardians of the Galaxy is the clearest statement of what Max Wrottesley does — accessible, 121 minutes, and rated 8.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Max 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.
Hugo (2011)
Keeps the adventure register of Guardians of the Galaxy but asks for a colder reading of it.
Captain Phillips (2013)
Keeps the drama register of Hugo but asks for a colder reading of it.
Number 24 (2024)
Keeps the drama register of Captain Phillips but asks for a colder reading of it.
Wildcat (2025)
A deliberate change of key after Number 24 — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Martin Scorsese
Director
1 film together
Notably Hugo
Oliver Hirschbiegel
Director
1 film together
Notably Diana
Paul Greengrass
Director
1 film together
Notably Captain Phillips
James Gunn
Director
1 film together
Notably Guardians of the Galaxy
John Andreas Andersen
Director
1 film together
Notably Number 24
James Nunn
Director
1 film together
Notably Wildcat
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
James Gunn
Director
1 film together · 8.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Guardians of the GalaxyPaul Greengrass
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Captain PhillipsJohn Andreas Andersen
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Number 24Martin 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
HugoJames Nunn
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
WildcatOliver Hirschbiegel
Director
1 film together · 5.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
DianaSix 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
Guardians of the Galaxy
as Sacrificed Nova Corpsman
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Hugo
as Train Engineer
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Guardians of the Galaxy
as Sacrificed Nova Corpsman
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Captain Phillips
as Sub Lieutenant P. Ashton (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Guardians of the Galaxy
as Sacrificed Nova Corpsman
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. Max Wrottesley 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.
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
Guardians of the Galaxy
as Sacrificed Nova Corpsman
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Captain Phillips
as Sub Lieutenant P. Ashton (uncredited)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Diana
as News of the World Photographer
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Code of Silence
as Exley
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Guardians of the Galaxy
as Sacrificed Nova Corpsman
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Guardians of the Galaxy
as Sacrificed Nova Corpsman
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Number 24
as MI5 Officer
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Guardians of the Galaxy
as Sacrificed Nova Corpsman
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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Works with the same directors — Martin Scorsese
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Works with the same directors — Martin Scorsese
Robert De Niro
Works with the same directors — Martin Scorsese
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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