Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#14929
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Patrick Malahide represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 37 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 Malahide appears in 12 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Patrick. The Killing Fields is the clearest case: a film rated 7.2 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, crime, thriller. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Martin Campbell, Julian Jarrold, Breck Eisner and others, Patrick Malahide 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 Killing Fields (1984) as Morgan · Quills (2000) as Delbené · The Protégé (2021) as Vohl
Career snapshot
Ranked #14929 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
12
1984–2021
Career length
37 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.2
The Killing Fields
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.5
The Killing Fields
Most frequent director
Martin Campbell
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Martin Campbell
Most common genre
Drama
6 titles
Average runtime
2h 2m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.9
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
6.7
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
1980s
7.2 average MV
The 1980s are where the work and the material meet. The Killing Fields — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1980s
7.2
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1980s
7.5
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1980s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Killing Fields.
Most productive era
2000s
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 | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.21 film | — | 6.34 films | 6.41 film | — |
| Action | — | 6.42 films | 5.91 film | — | 6.61 film |
| Thriller | — | 6.42 films | 6.21 film | — | 6.61 film |
| Comedy | — | — | 6.23 films | 6.41 film | — |
| Crime | — | 6.51 film | — | — | 6.61 film |
| Romance | — | — | 6.22 films | 6.41 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Morgan. 7.2 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
2000Quills
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2021The Protégé
The current state of the argument, as Vohl.
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.
12 of 12 films
as Vohl
Directed by Martin Campbell
as Magnus Crome
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.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Delbené
Quills (2000)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Delbené gives Patrick Malahide a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Morgan
The Killing Fields (1984)
Performance score7.1
The Killing Fields asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Morgan is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Vohl
The Protégé (2021)
Performance score6.8
The Protégé asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Vohl is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Arthur Frommer
EuroTrip (2004)
Performance score6.6
EuroTrip asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Arthur Frommer 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 Delbené
Start here. Quills is the clearest statement of what Patrick Malahide does — accessible, 124 minutes, and rated 7.1 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.
The Killing Fields (1984)
Keeps the drama register of Quills but asks for a colder reading of it.
EuroTrip (2004)
A deliberate change of key after The Killing Fields — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Mortal Engines (2018)
A deliberate change of key after EuroTrip — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Protégé (2021)
A deliberate change of key after Mortal Engines — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Roland Joffé
Director
1 film together
Notably The Killing Fields
Stuart Baird
Director
1 film together
Notably U.S. Marshals
Michael Apted
Director
1 film together
Notably The World Is Not Enough
Philip Kaufman
Director
1 film together
Notably Quills
Thaddeus O'Sullivan
Director
1 film together
Notably Ordinary Decent Criminal
John Madden
Director
1 film together
Notably Captain Corelli's Mandolin
Alec Berg
Director
1 film together
Notably EuroTrip
Breck Eisner
Director
1 film together
Notably Sahara
Julian Jarrold
Director
1 film together
Notably Brideshead Revisited
Martin Campbell
Director
1 film together
Notably The Protégé
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Roland Joffé
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Killing FieldsPhilip Kaufman
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
QuillsMartin Campbell
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The ProtégéAlec Berg
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
EuroTripStuart Baird
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
U.S. MarshalsJulian Jarrold
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Brideshead RevisitedMichael Apted
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 World Is Not EnoughThaddeus O'Sullivan
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Ordinary Decent CriminalJohn Madden
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Captain Corelli's MandolinBreck Eisner
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SaharaSix 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 Killing Fields
as Morgan
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Brideshead Revisited
as Mr. Ryder
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
The Killing Fields
as Morgan
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Captain Corelli's Mandolin
as Colonel Barge
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Quills
as Delbené
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 Malahide 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
37 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
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
The Killing Fields
as Morgan
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Protégé
as Vohl
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Brideshead Revisited
as Mr. Ryder
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Sahara
as Ambassador Polidori
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The World Is Not Enough
as Lachaise
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The World Is Not Enough
as Lachaise
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Bridget Jones's Baby
as George Wilkins
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Protégé
as Vohl
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
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Robert Downey Jr.
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Have your say
Community
Which Patrick Malahide 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
