Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#12589
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Norbert Weisser represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 42 years in, and Norbert is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Norbert Weisser appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Norbert. Schindler's List is the clearest case: a film rated 8.8 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 drama, mystery, thriller. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Ron Howard, Ed Harris, Steven Spielberg and others, Norbert Weisser 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.
Schindler's List (1993) as Albert Hujar · The Thing (1982) as Norwegian · Midnight Express (1978) as Erich
Career snapshot
Ranked #12589 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
1978–2020
Career length
42 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.8
Schindler's List
Average Nutevio score
6.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.6
Schindler's List
Most frequent director
Ron Howard
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Ron Howard
Most common genre
Drama
4 titles
Average runtime
2h 0m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.2
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
7.0
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
7.3 average MV
The 1970s are where the work and the material meet. Midnight Express — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1970s
7.3
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1970s
7.5
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. Midnight Express.
Most productive era
1990s
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 | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.31 film | — | 8.81 film | 6.61 film | 6.11 film |
| Action | — | 6.41 film | 5.21 film | — | — |
| Thriller | — | — | — | 6.91 film | — |
| Comedy | — | 6.41 film | 7.11 film | — | — |
| Crime | 7.31 film | — | — | — | — |
| Horror | — | 8.21 film | — | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1978Midnight Express
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Erich.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1993Schindler's List
8.8 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
The current state of the argument.
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 Albert Hujar
Directed by Steven Spielberg
as Norwegian
Directed by John Carpenter
as Erich
Directed by Alan Parker
as Thackery's Father
Directed by Kenny Ortega
as CERN Scientist
Directed by Ron Howard
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
Albert Hujar
Schindler's List (1993)
Performance score8.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Albert Hujar gives Norbert Weisser a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Norwegian
The Thing (1982)
Performance score7.9
The Thing asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Norwegian is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Erich
Midnight Express (1978)
Performance score7.2
Midnight Express asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Erich is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Thackery's Father
Hocus Pocus (1993)
Performance score7.0
Hocus Pocus asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Thackery's Father 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 Albert Hujar
Start here. Schindler's List is the clearest statement of what Norbert Weisser does — accessible, 195 minutes, and rated 8.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Norbert 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.
Midnight Express (1978)
Keeps the drama register of Schindler's List but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Thing (1982)
A deliberate change of key after Midnight Express — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Hocus Pocus (1993)
A deliberate change of key after The Thing — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Angels & Demons (2009)
A deliberate change of key after Hocus Pocus — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Alan Parker
Director
1 film together
Notably Midnight Express
John Carpenter
Director
1 film together
Notably The Thing
John Landis
Director
1 film together
Notably ¡Three Amigos!
Albert Pyun
Director
1 film together
Notably Captain America
Joe Johnston
Director
1 film together
Notably The Rocketeer
Kenny Ortega
Director
1 film together
Notably Hocus Pocus
Steven Spielberg
Director
1 film together
Notably Schindler's List
Ed Harris
Director
1 film together
Notably Pollock
Ron Howard
Director
1 film together
Notably Angels & Demons
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Steven Spielberg
Director
1 film together · 8.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Schindler's ListJohn Carpenter
Director
1 film together · 8.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The ThingAlan Parker
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Midnight ExpressKenny Ortega
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hocus PocusRon Howard
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Angels & DemonsEd Harris
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
PollockJoe Johnston
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 RocketeerJohn Landis
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
¡Three Amigos!Albert Pyun
Director
1 film together · 5.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Captain AmericaSix 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
The Thing
as Norwegian
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Pollock
as Hans Namuth
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Schindler's List
as Albert Hujar
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Pollock
as Hans Namuth
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Schindler's List
as Albert Hujar
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. Norbert Weisser 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
42 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 Thing
as Norwegian
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Thing
as Norwegian
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Pollock
as Hans Namuth
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Angels & Demons
as CERN Scientist
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Schindler's List
as Albert Hujar
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
¡Three Amigos!
as German's Friend
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Schindler's List
as Albert Hujar
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Captain America
as Alaskan Surveyor
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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