Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Peter Lavin appears in 5 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Peter. Dragons: Gift of the Night Fury is the clearest case: a film rated 7.0 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are transformation, versatility, screen presence. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for action, comedy, adventure. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Chris Butler, Tom Owens, Robert Zemeckis and others, Peter Lavin 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.
Dragons: Gift of the Night Fury (2011) as Misc Viking 1 (voice) · Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) as Leroy · Missing Link (2019) as Old Worlder (voice)
Career snapshot
A Nutevio catalogue profile for Peter Lavin.
Films in Nutevio
5
2005–2019
Career length
14 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.0
Dragons: Gift of the Night Fury
Average Nutevio score
6.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
Dragons: Gift of the Night Fury
Most frequent director
Chris Butler
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Chris Butler
Most common genre
Comedy
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 34m
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
6.4
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
2010s
6.9 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Missing Link, Dragons: Gift of the Night Fury — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.9
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
7.1
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. Beowulf, A Good Year, Mr. & Mrs. Smith.
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 | 2000s | 2010s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.82 films | — |
| Action | 6.52 films | 6.81 film |
| Thriller | 6.91 film | — |
| Comedy | 6.82 films | 6.92 films |
| Romance | 6.71 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2005Mr. & Mrs. Smith
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Leroy.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2011Dragons: Gift of the Night Fury
7.0 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
2019Missing Link
The current state of the argument, as Old Worlder (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.
5 of 5 films
as Misc Viking 1 (voice)
Directed by Tom Owens
as Leroy
Directed by Doug Liman
as Old Worlder (voice)
Directed by Chris Butler
as (voice)
Directed by Ridley Scott
as Voice Performer (voice)
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
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
Misc Viking 1 (voice)
Dragons: Gift of the Night Fury (2011)
Performance score6.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Misc Viking 1 (voice) gives Peter Lavin a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Leroy
Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005)
Performance score6.8
Mr. & Mrs. Smith asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Leroy is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Old Worlder (voice)
Missing Link (2019)
Performance score6.7
Missing Link asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Old Worlder (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
(voice)
A Good Year (2006)
Performance score6.6
A Good Year asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. (voice) 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 Misc Viking 1 (voice)
Start here. Dragons: Gift of the Night Fury is the clearest statement of what Peter Lavin does — accessible, 22 minutes, and rated 7.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Peter 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.
Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005)
Keeps the comedy register of Dragons: Gift of the Night Fury but asks for a colder reading of it.
A Good Year (2006)
Keeps the comedy register of Mr. & Mrs. Smith but asks for a colder reading of it.
Beowulf (2007)
A deliberate change of key after A Good Year — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Missing Link (2019)
Keeps the action register of Beowulf but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Doug Liman
Director
1 film together
Notably Mr. & Mrs. Smith
Ridley Scott
Director
1 film together
Notably A Good Year
Robert Zemeckis
Director
1 film together
Notably Beowulf
Tom Owens
Director
1 film together
Notably Dragons: Gift of the Night Fury
Chris Butler
Director
1 film together
Notably Missing Link
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Tom Owens
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Dragons: Gift of the Night FuryDoug Liman
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mr. & Mrs. SmithChris Butler
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Missing LinkRidley Scott
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Good YearRobert Zemeckis
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BeowulfSix 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
Mr. & Mrs. Smith
as Leroy
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
A Good Year
as (voice)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Dragons: Gift of the Night Fury
as Misc Viking 1 (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
A Good Year
as (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Dragons: Gift of the Night Fury
as Misc Viking 1 (voice)
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. Peter Lavin 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.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
4 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
Dragons: Gift of the Night Fury
as Misc Viking 1 (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Mr. & Mrs. Smith
as Leroy
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
A Good Year
as (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Mr. & Mrs. Smith
as Leroy
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Missing Link
as Old Worlder (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Missing Link
as Old Worlder (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Missing Link
as Old Worlder (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Mr. & Mrs. Smith
as Leroy
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
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Edward Norton
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
Tom Wilkinson
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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