Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#47493
of 909177 performers
Top 10%
Nicolas Vaude represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 31 years in, and Nicolas is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Nicolas Vaude appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Nicolas. The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan is the clearest case: a film rated 6.9 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 crime, drama, action. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with François Ozon, Martin Bourboulon, Pascal Elbé and others, Nicolas Vaude 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 Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan (2023) as The Judge · Queen Margot (1994) · The Stranger (2025) as Prosecutor
Career snapshot
Ranked #47493 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
1994–2025
Career length
31 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.9
The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan
Average Nutevio score
6.3
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.2
Queen Margot
Most frequent director
François Ozon
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With François Ozon
Most common genre
Drama
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 40m
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
6.5
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
1990s
6.9 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Queen Margot — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
6.9
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
7.2
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. Queen Margot.
Most productive era
2020s
5 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 | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.91 film | — | 6.63 films |
| Action | — | 5.81 film | 6.91 film |
| Thriller | — | 5.81 film | — |
| Comedy | — | 5.42 films | 6.52 films |
| Crime | — | — | 6.81 film |
| Romance | 6.91 film | — | 6.41 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
1994Queen Margot
Where our catalogue meets this career. 6.9 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 Stranger
The current state of the argument, as Prosecutor.
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.
9 of 9 films
as The Judge
Directed by Martin Bourboulon
Directed by Patrice Chéreau
as Prosecutor
Directed by François Ozon
as Charles Schneider
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.
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The defining work
#1
The Judge
The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan (2023)
Performance score6.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. The Judge gives Nicolas Vaude a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Pavel
Une heure de tranquillité (2020)
Performance score6.8
Une heure de tranquillité asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Pavel is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Queen Margot
Queen Margot (1994)
Performance score6.8
Queen Margot asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. The role is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Prosecutor
The Stranger (2025)
Performance score6.7
The Stranger asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Prosecutor 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 The Judge
Start here. The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan is the clearest statement of what Nicolas Vaude does — accessible, 121 minutes, and rated 6.9 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Nicolas 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.
Queen Margot (1994)
Keeps the drama register of The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan but asks for a colder reading of it.
A Good Doctor (2019)
A deliberate change of key after Queen Margot — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Une heure de tranquillité (2020)
Same director as A Good Doctor, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
The Stranger (2025)
A deliberate change of key after Une heure de tranquillité — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Patrice Chéreau
Director
1 film together
Notably Queen Margot
Jérôme Salle
Director
1 film together
Notably Largo Winch II
Jean-Marie Poiré
Director
1 film together
Notably The Visitors: Bastille Day
Gabriel Le Bomin
Director
1 film together
Notably De Gaulle
Pascal Elbé
Director
1 film together
Notably Hear Me Out
Martin Bourboulon
Director
1 film together
Notably The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan
François Ozon
Director
1 film together
Notably The Stranger
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Martin Bourboulon
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 Three Musketeers: D'ArtagnanPatrice Chéreau
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Queen MargotFrançois Ozon
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 StrangerPascal Elbé
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hear Me OutGabriel Le Bomin
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
De GaulleJérôme Salle
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Largo Winch IIJean-Marie Poiré
Director
1 film together · 4.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Visitors: Bastille DaySix 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
Queen Margot
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Queen Margot
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Queen Margot
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Queen Margot
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan
as The Judge
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. Nicolas Vaude 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
31 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
4 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
The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan
as The Judge
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Stranger
as Prosecutor
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Queen Margot
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Stranger
as Prosecutor
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan
as The Judge
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan
as The Judge
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Stranger
as Prosecutor
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
A Good Doctor
as Charles Schneider
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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