Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#50128
of 909177 performers
Top 10%
Paul Borghese represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 35 years in, and Paul is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Paul Borghese appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Paul. Julie & Julia is the clearest case: a film rated 6.8 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, quiet performance, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for comedy, crime, documentary. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Pamela Adlon, Luc Besson, Nora Ephron and others, Paul Borghese 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.
Julie & Julia (2009) as GI · The Family (2013) as Albert · Find Me Guilty (2006) as Gino Mascarpone
Career snapshot
Ranked #50128 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
1989–2024
Career length
35 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.8
Julie & Julia
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
6.7
Julie & Julia
Most frequent director
Lloyd Kaufman
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Lloyd Kaufman
Most common genre
Comedy
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 40m
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
2000s
6.5 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Julie & Julia, The Babysitters, Find Me Guilty — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.5
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.4
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 Toxic Avenger Part II, The Toxic Avenger Part III: The Last Temptation of Toxie.
Most productive era
2000s
3 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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.53 films | — | — |
| Action | 5.82 films | — | 6.51 film | — |
| Comedy | 5.82 films | 6.51 film | 6.51 film | 6.22 films |
| Crime | — | 6.51 film | 6.51 film | 6.21 film |
| Romance | — | 6.81 film | — | — |
| Horror | 5.82 films | — | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Lou Sipher (uncredited).
Highest rated performance
2009Julie & Julia
6.8 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
2019Narrowsburg
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2024Babes
The current state of the argument, as Other Actor.
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.
9 of 9 films
as GI
Directed by Nora Ephron
as Cholley
Directed by Unknown
as Albert
Directed by Luc Besson
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
Himself
Narrowsburg (2019)
Performance score6.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Himself gives Paul Borghese a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
GI
Julie & Julia (2009)
Performance score6.7
Julie & Julia asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. GI is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Other Actor
Babes (2024)
Performance score6.5
Babes asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Other Actor is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Cholley
Killin Smallz (2022)
Performance score6.5
Killin Smallz asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Cholley 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 Himself
Start here. Narrowsburg is the clearest statement of what Paul Borghese does — accessible, 84 minutes, and rated 6.2 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Paul 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.
Julie & Julia (2009)
A deliberate change of key after Narrowsburg — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Family (2013)
A deliberate change of key after Julie & Julia — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Killin Smallz (2022)
Keeps the comedy register of The Family but asks for a colder reading of it.
Babes (2024)
Keeps the comedy register of Killin Smallz but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Lloyd Kaufman
Director
2 films together
Notably The Toxic Avenger Part II
Sidney Lumet
Director
1 film together
Notably Find Me Guilty
Nora Ephron
Director
1 film together
Notably Julie & Julia
Luc Besson
Director
1 film together
Notably The Family
Pamela Adlon
Director
1 film together
Notably Babes
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Lloyd Kaufman
Director
2 films together · 5.8 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The Toxic Avenger Part IINora Ephron
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Julie & JuliaLuc Besson
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 FamilySidney Lumet
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Find Me GuiltyPamela Adlon
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BabesSix 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
Julie & Julia
as GI
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Julie & Julia
as GI
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Julie & Julia
as GI
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Julie & Julia
as GI
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Narrowsburg
as Himself
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. Paul Borghese 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
35 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.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
6 catalogue titles in comedy, 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
Julie & Julia
as GI
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Family
as Albert
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Julie & Julia
as GI
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Find Me Guilty
as Gino Mascarpone
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Family
as Albert
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Toxic Avenger Part II
as Lou Sipher (uncredited)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Find Me Guilty
as Gino Mascarpone
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Killin Smallz
as Cholley
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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Built a career in the same territory: drama and action
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Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
John Fiedler
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Lee J. Cobb
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
E.G. Marshall
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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