Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#7962
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Patrick Breen represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 26 years in, and Patrick is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Patrick Breen appears in 13 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Patrick. Men in Black is the clearest case: a film rated 7.4 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, fantasy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Philip Gelatt, Kitty Green, Ivan Reitman and others, Patrick Breen 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.
Men in Black (1997) as Mr. Redgick · Radio (2003) as Tucker · Galaxy Quest (1999) as Quellek
Career snapshot
Ranked #7962 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
13
1995–2021
Career length
26 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.4
Men in Black
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.4
Never Surrender: A Galaxy Quest Documentary
Most frequent director
Barry Sonnenfeld
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Barry Sonnenfeld
Most common genre
Drama
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 37m
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
7.0 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Galaxy Quest, Men in Black, Get Shorty — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
7.0
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
6.9
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. Galaxy Quest, Men in Black, Get Shorty.
Most productive era
2000s
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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 7.11 film | 6.72 films | 6.22 films |
| Action | 7.41 film | 6.11 film | — | 6.21 film |
| Thriller | 6.61 film | 6.11 film | 6.61 film | — |
| Comedy | 7.03 films | 5.92 films | — | — |
| Crime | 6.61 film | — | 6.61 film | — |
| Horror | — | — | — | 6.21 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1995Get Shorty
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Resident Doctor.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1997Men in Black
7.4 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, as Doa (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.
13 of 13 films
as Mr. Redgick
Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld
as Quellek
Directed by Dean Parisot
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
Mr. Redgick
Men in Black (1997)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Mr. Redgick gives Patrick Breen a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Tucker
Radio (2003)
Performance score7.0
Radio asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Tucker is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Quellek
Galaxy Quest (1999)
Performance score7.0
Galaxy Quest asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Quellek is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Self
Never Surrender: A Galaxy Quest Documentary (2019)
Performance score6.6
Never Surrender: A Galaxy Quest Documentary asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self 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 Mr. Redgick
Start here. Men in Black is the clearest statement of what Patrick Breen does — accessible, 98 minutes, and rated 7.4 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Patrick 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.
Galaxy Quest (1999)
Keeps the science fiction register of Men in Black but asks for a colder reading of it.
Radio (2003)
A deliberate change of key after Galaxy Quest — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Draft Day (2014)
Keeps the drama register of Radio but asks for a colder reading of it.
Never Surrender: A Galaxy Quest Documentary (2019)
A deliberate change of key after Draft Day — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Barry Sonnenfeld
Director
2 films together
Notably Men in Black
Dean Parisot
Director
1 film together
Notably Galaxy Quest
Michael Tollin
Director
1 film together
Notably Radio
Joe Roth
Director
1 film together
Notably Christmas with the Kranks
Kirk DeMicco
Director
1 film together
Notably Space Chimps
Paul Weitz
Director
1 film together
Notably Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
J.C. Chandor
Director
1 film together
Notably A Most Violent Year
Ivan Reitman
Director
1 film together
Notably Draft Day
Kitty Green
Director
1 film together
Notably The Assistant
Philip Gelatt
Director
1 film together
Notably The Spine of Night
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Barry Sonnenfeld
Director
2 films together · 7.0 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Men in BlackMichael Tollin
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
RadioDean Parisot
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Galaxy QuestIvan Reitman
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Draft DayJ.C. Chandor
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Most Violent YearKitty Green
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The AssistantJoe Roth
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Christmas with the KranksPhilip Gelatt
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 Spine of NightPaul Weitz
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's AssistantKirk DeMicco
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Space ChimpsSix 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
Men in Black
as Mr. Redgick
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Radio
as Tucker
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Men in Black
as Mr. Redgick
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Draft Day
as Bill Zotti
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Men in Black
as Mr. Redgick
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. Patrick Breen 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
26 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
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
Men in Black
as Mr. Redgick
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Men in Black
as Mr. Redgick
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Assistant
as Roy
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
A Most Violent Year
as Instructor
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Men in Black
as Mr. Redgick
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Men in Black
as Mr. Redgick
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
A Most Violent Year
as Instructor
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Beirut: An MCC Virtual TV Event
as Guard
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Elliot Page
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
Have your say
Community
Which Patrick Breen 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
