Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3514
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Nick Chinlund represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 30 years in, and Nick is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Nick Chinlund appears in 20 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Nick. Training Day is the clearest case: a film rated 7.6 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, horror, thriller. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Isaac Florentine, Ric Roman Waugh, Kurt Wimmer and others, Nick Chinlund 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.
Training Day (2001) as Tim · Dinner in America (2020) as Bill · Felon (2008) as Sgt. Roberts
Career snapshot
Ranked #3514 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
20
1992–2022
Career length
30 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.6
Training Day
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.7
Dinner in America
Most frequent director
David Twohy
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With David Twohy
Most common genre
Action
14 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
7.0
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
2000s
6.5 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Felon, The Onion Movie, Ultraviolet — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.5
Across 10 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.5
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. Con Air, Eraser, Bad Girls.
Most productive era
2000s
10 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 | — | 7.23 films | 6.32 films | — |
| Action | 6.64 films | 6.67 films | 6.52 films | 5.81 film |
| Thriller | 6.73 films | 6.34 films | 6.33 films | 5.81 film |
| Comedy | — | 6.52 films | — | 7.21 film |
| Crime | 6.82 films | 7.32 films | 6.52 films | — |
| Romance | 5.81 film | — | — | 7.21 film |
| Horror | — | 6.21 film | — | 5.81 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1992Lethal Weapon 3
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Hatchett.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2001Training Day
7.6 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
2022The Prey: Legend of Karnoctus
The current state of the argument, as Tagger.
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.
20 of 20 films
as Tim
Directed by Antoine Fuqua
as Sgt. Roberts
Directed by Ric Roman Waugh
as Michael 'Slo' Slowenski
Directed by Antoine Fuqua
as Sheriff Jasper Calloway
Directed by Isaac Florentine
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
Tim
Training Day (2001)
Performance score7.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Tim gives Nick Chinlund a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Bill
Dinner in America (2020)
Performance score7.1
Dinner in America asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Bill is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Sgt. Roberts
Felon (2008)
Performance score7.1
Felon asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Sgt. Roberts is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Michael 'Slo' Slowenski
Tears of the Sun (2003)
Performance score7.1
Tears of the Sun asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Michael 'Slo' Slowenski 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 Tim
Start here. Training Day is the clearest statement of what Nick Chinlund does — accessible, 122 minutes, and rated 7.6 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Nick 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.
Tears of the Sun (2003)
Same director as Training Day, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Felon (2008)
Keeps the action register of Tears of the Sun but asks for a colder reading of it.
Close Range (2015)
Keeps the action register of Felon but asks for a colder reading of it.
Dinner in America (2020)
A deliberate change of key after Close Range — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Antoine Fuqua
Director
2 films together
Notably Training Day
David Twohy
Director
2 films together
Notably The Chronicles of Riddick
Richard Donner
Director
1 film together
Notably Lethal Weapon 3
Vic Armstrong
Director
1 film together
Notably Joshua Tree
Jonathan Kaplan
Director
1 film together
Notably Bad Girls
Chuck Russell
Director
1 film together
Notably Eraser
Simon West
Director
1 film together
Notably Con Air
Jon Turteltaub
Director
1 film together
Notably The Kid
Peter Chung
Director
1 film together
Notably The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury
Martin Campbell
Director
1 film together
Notably The Legend of Zorro
Kurt Wimmer
Director
1 film together
Notably Ultraviolet
Ric Roman Waugh
Director
1 film together
Notably Felon
Isaac Florentine
Director
1 film together
Notably Close Range
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Antoine Fuqua
Director
2 films together · 7.3 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Training DayDavid Twohy
Director
2 films together · 6.4 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The Chronicles of RiddickRic Roman Waugh
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
FelonSimon West
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Con AirJon Turteltaub
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 KidRichard Donner
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Lethal Weapon 3Isaac Florentine
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Close RangeMartin Campbell
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Legend of ZorroChuck Russell
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
EraserVic Armstrong
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Joshua TreePeter Chung
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 Chronicles of Riddick: Dark FuryJonathan Kaplan
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Bad GirlsKurt Wimmer
Director
1 film together · 5.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
UltravioletSix 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
Training Day
as Tim
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Dinner in America
as Bill
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Training Day
as Tim
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Kid
as Larry King's Guest
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Training Day
as Tim
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. Nick Chinlund 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
14 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
Training Day
as Tim
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Training Day
as Tim
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Dinner in America
as Bill
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Below
as Chief
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Training Day
as Tim
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Legend of Zorro
as Jacob McGivens
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Felon
as Sgt. Roberts
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Prey: Legend of Karnoctus
as Tagger
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Jamie Harris
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Have your say
Community
Which Nick Chinlund performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
Join the conversation
Reference
Continue exploring
Trending performers
Directors they work with
Collections to read next
