Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#4536
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Paul Lazenby works on versatility rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Paul Lazenby appears in 13 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Paul. The Last Stand of Ellen Cole is the clearest case: a film rated 8.2 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, action. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for action, drama, history. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Benny Safdie, Steven Kostanski, Jeff Fowler and others, Paul Lazenby 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 Last Stand of Ellen Cole (2024) as One · Deadpool (2016) as Flight Deck Guard · Deadpool 2 (2018) as Strip Club Baddie
Career snapshot
Ranked #4536 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
13
2004–2025
Career length
21 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.2
The Last Stand of Ellen Cole
Average Nutevio score
6.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.2
The Last Stand of Ellen Cole
Most frequent director
David Leitch
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With David Leitch
Most common genre
Action
11 titles
Average runtime
1h 52m
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
6.6
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
7.1 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. White Chicks — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
7.1
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
7.0
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2000s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. White Chicks.
Most productive era
2010s
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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | — | 6.41 film |
| Action | — | 6.97 films | 7.04 films |
| Thriller | — | 6.63 films | — |
| Comedy | 7.11 film | 7.53 films | 6.92 films |
| Crime | 7.11 film | 5.51 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2004White Chicks
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Dealer Henchman.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2024The Last Stand of Ellen Cole
8.2 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
2025Deathstalker
The current state of the argument, as Jotak.
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 Flight Deck Guard
Directed by Tim Miller
as Strip Club Baddie
Directed by David Leitch
as Mean Bean Trucker
Directed by Jeff Fowler
as Strip Club Baddie
Directed by David Leitch
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
One
The Last Stand of Ellen Cole (2024)
Performance score7.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. One gives Paul Lazenby a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Flight Deck Guard
Deadpool (2016)
Performance score7.7
Deadpool asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Flight Deck Guard is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Strip Club Baddie
Deadpool 2 (2018)
Performance score7.3
Deadpool 2 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Strip Club Baddie is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Mean Bean Trucker
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022)
Performance score7.2
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mean Bean Trucker 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 One
Start here. The Last Stand of Ellen Cole is the clearest statement of what Paul Lazenby does — accessible, 92 minutes, and rated 8.2 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.
Deadpool (2016)
Keeps the action register of The Last Stand of Ellen Cole but asks for a colder reading of it.
Deadpool 2 (2018)
Keeps the action register of Deadpool but asks for a colder reading of it.
Once Upon a Deadpool (2018)
Same director as Deadpool 2, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022)
Keeps the action register of Once Upon a Deadpool but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
David Leitch
Director
2 films together
Notably Deadpool 2
Keenen Ivory Wayans
Director
1 film together
Notably White Chicks
Brad Bird
Director
1 film together
Notably Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
Walter Hill
Director
1 film together
Notably The Assignment
Tim Miller
Director
1 film together
Notably Deadpool
Wes Ball
Director
1 film together
Notably Maze Runner: The Death Cure
Jay Karas
Director
1 film together
Notably The Main Event
Jeff Fowler
Director
1 film together
Notably Sonic the Hedgehog 2
Steven Kostanski
Director
1 film together
Notably Deathstalker
Benny Safdie
Director
1 film together
Notably The Smashing Machine
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
David Leitch
Director
2 films together · 7.3 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Deadpool 2Tim Miller
Director
1 film together · 7.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
DeadpoolJeff Fowler
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Sonic the Hedgehog 2Wes Ball
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Maze Runner: The Death CureBrad Bird
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mission: Impossible - Ghost ProtocolKeenen Ivory Wayans
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
White ChicksBenny Safdie
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 Smashing MachineJay Karas
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 Main EventSteven Kostanski
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
DeathstalkerWalter Hill
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The AssignmentSix 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 Last Stand of Ellen Cole
as One
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
The Smashing Machine
as Hans Nijman (uncredited)
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 Last Stand of Ellen Cole
as One
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Sonic the Hedgehog 2
as Mean Bean Trucker
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Last Stand of Ellen Cole
as One
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 Lazenby 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
21 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.
Action Legend
Awarded
11 catalogue titles in action, 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 Last Stand of Ellen Cole
as One
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Last Stand of Ellen Cole
as One
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Smashing Machine
as Hans Nijman (uncredited)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Deathstalker
as Jotak
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Last Stand of Ellen Cole
as One
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Last Stand of Ellen Cole
as One
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Smashing Machine
as Hans Nijman (uncredited)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Deadpool
as Flight Deck Guard
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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David Krumholtz
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Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: family and comedy
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: family and comedy
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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