Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#9355
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Patrick Muldoon represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 29 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 Muldoon appears in 11 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Patrick. Starship Troopers 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 Kevin Interdonato, Neil Jordan, George Gallo and others, Patrick Muldoon 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.
Starship Troopers (1997) as Zander Barcalow · Dakota (2022) as Sheriff Danforth · Arkansas (2020) as Joe
Career snapshot
Ranked #9355 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
11
1997–2026
Career length
29 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.2
Starship Troopers
Average Nutevio score
5.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.1
Starship Troopers
Most frequent director
George Gallo
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With George Gallo
Most common genre
Thriller
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 41m
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
6.3
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
7.2 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Starship Troopers — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
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
1990s
7.1
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. Starship Troopers.
Most productive era
2020s
7 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 | — | — | 6.11 film |
| Action | 7.21 film | — | 5.14 films |
| Thriller | 7.21 film | 4.41 film | 5.14 films |
| Comedy | — | 5.81 film | 5.81 film |
| Crime | — | — | 5.44 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Zander Barcalow. 7.2 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
2026Dirty Hands
The current state of the argument, as Richie Denton.
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.
11 of 11 films
as Zander Barcalow
Directed by Paul Verhoeven
as Bob Ryan
Directed by Unknown
as Richie Denton
Directed by Kevin Interdonato
as Richard Cavendish
Directed by Neil Jordan
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
Zander Barcalow
Starship Troopers (1997)
Performance score7.1
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Zander Barcalow gives Patrick Muldoon a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Bob Ryan
Bernie the Dolphin 2 (2019)
Performance score6.6
Bernie the Dolphin 2 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Bob Ryan is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Richie Denton
Dirty Hands (2026)
Performance score6.5
Dirty Hands asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Richie Denton is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Richard Cavendish
Marlowe (2023)
Performance score6.5
Marlowe asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Richard Cavendish 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 Zander Barcalow
Start here. Starship Troopers is the clearest statement of what Patrick Muldoon does — accessible, 129 minutes, and rated 7.2 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.
Bernie the Dolphin 2 (2019)
Keeps the adventure register of Starship Troopers but asks for a colder reading of it.
Dakota (2022)
Same director as Bernie the Dolphin 2, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Marlowe (2023)
A deliberate change of key after Dakota — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Dirty Hands (2026)
Keeps the crime register of Marlowe but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
George Gallo
Director
2 films together
Notably The Comeback Trail
Paul Verhoeven
Director
1 film together
Notably Starship Troopers
Tibor Takács
Director
1 film together
Notably Spiders
Clark Duke
Director
1 film together
Notably Arkansas
Jared Cohn
Director
1 film together
Notably Deadlock
Neil Jordan
Director
1 film together
Notably Marlowe
Kevin Interdonato
Director
1 film together
Notably Dirty Hands
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
George Gallo
Director
2 films together · 5.5 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The Comeback TrailPaul Verhoeven
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Starship TroopersClark Duke
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
ArkansasNeil Jordan
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
MarloweJared Cohn
Director
1 film together · 5.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
DeadlockTibor Takács
Director
1 film together · 4.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SpidersKevin Interdonato
Director
1 film together · 4.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Dirty HandsSix 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
Starship Troopers
as Zander Barcalow
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Dakota
as Sheriff Danforth
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Starship Troopers
as Zander Barcalow
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Starship Troopers
as Zander Barcalow
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Starship Troopers
as Zander Barcalow
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 Muldoon 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
29 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.
Thriller Legend
Awarded
6 catalogue titles in thriller, 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
Starship Troopers
as Zander Barcalow
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Starship Troopers
as Zander Barcalow
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Dakota
as Sheriff Danforth
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Arkansas
as Joe
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Starship Troopers
as Zander Barcalow
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Vanquish
as Agent Monroe
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Bernie the Dolphin 2
as Bob Ryan
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Starship Troopers
as Zander Barcalow
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
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Reference
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