Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#26784
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Nigel Hawthorne 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.
Nigel Hawthorne appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Nigel. Tarzan is the clearest case: a film rated 7.5 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 adventure, family, animation. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Kevin Lima, Nicholas Hytner, Steven Spielberg and others, Nigel Hawthorne 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.
Tarzan (1999) as Professor Archimedes Q. Porter (voice) · Gandhi (1982) as Kinnoch · Watership Down (1978) as Captain Campion (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #26784 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
1978–1999
Career length
21 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.5
Tarzan
Average Nutevio score
6.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.6
Gandhi
Most frequent director
Nicholas Hytner
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Nicholas Hytner
Most common genre
Drama
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 58m
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
6.6
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
1970s
7.0 average MV
The 1970s are where the work and the material meet. Watership Down — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1970s
7.0
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1970s
7.2
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1970s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Watership Down.
Most productive era
1990s
6 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 | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.01 film | 7.41 film | 6.54 films |
| Action | — | 6.11 film | 6.81 film |
| Thriller | — | 6.11 film | — |
| Comedy | — | — | 6.81 film |
| Crime | — | — | 6.81 film |
| Romance | — | — | 5.81 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1978Watership Down
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Captain Campion (voice).
Career peak
1994The Madness of King George
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance · Most recent film
1999Tarzan
7.5 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. The current state of the argument, as Professor Archimedes Q. Porter (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 George III
Directed by Nicholas Hytner
as Professor Archimedes Q. Porter (voice)
Directed by Kevin Lima
as Martin Van Buren
Directed by Steven Spielberg
as Kinnoch
Directed by Richard Attenborough
as Dr. Raymond Cocteau
Directed by Marco Brambilla
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
George III
The Madness of King George (1994)
Performance score7.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. George III gives Nigel Hawthorne a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Professor Archimedes Q. Porter (voice)
Tarzan (1999)
Performance score7.3
Tarzan asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Professor Archimedes Q. Porter (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Martin Van Buren
Amistad (1997)
Performance score7.3
Amistad asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Martin Van Buren is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Kinnoch
Gandhi (1982)
Performance score7.2
Gandhi asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Kinnoch 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 George III
Start here. The Madness of King George is the clearest statement of what Nigel Hawthorne does — accessible, 107 minutes, and rated 6.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Nigel 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.
Gandhi (1982)
Keeps the drama register of The Madness of King George but asks for a colder reading of it.
Demolition Man (1993)
A deliberate change of key after Gandhi — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Amistad (1997)
A deliberate change of key after Demolition Man — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Tarzan (1999)
A deliberate change of key after Amistad — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Nicholas Hytner
Director
2 films together
Notably The Madness of King George
Martin Rosen
Director
1 film together
Notably Watership Down
Clint Eastwood
Director
1 film together
Notably Firefox
Richard Attenborough
Director
1 film together
Notably Gandhi
Richard Rich
Director
1 film together
Notably The Black Cauldron
Marco Brambilla
Director
1 film together
Notably Demolition Man
Richard Loncraine
Director
1 film together
Notably Richard III
Steven Spielberg
Director
1 film together
Notably Amistad
Kevin Lima
Director
1 film together
Notably Tarzan
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Nicholas Hytner
Director
2 films together · 6.3 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The Madness of King GeorgeKevin Lima
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
TarzanRichard Attenborough
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
GandhiMartin Rosen
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Watership DownSteven Spielberg
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
AmistadMarco Brambilla
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Demolition ManRichard Loncraine
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Richard IIIRichard Rich
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Black CauldronClint Eastwood
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
FirefoxSix 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
Tarzan
as Professor Archimedes Q. Porter (voice)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Tarzan
as Professor Archimedes Q. Porter (voice)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Gandhi
as Kinnoch
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Gandhi
as Kinnoch
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Madness of King George
as George III
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. Nigel Hawthorne 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
21 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Drama Legend
Awarded
6 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
Amistad
as Martin Van Buren
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Demolition Man
as Dr. Raymond Cocteau
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Tarzan
as Professor Archimedes Q. Porter (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Amistad
as Martin Van Buren
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Tarzan
as Professor Archimedes Q. Porter (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Firefox
as Pyotr Baranovich
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Madness of King George
as George III
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Tarzan
as Professor Archimedes Q. Porter (voice)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
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
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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