Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#12245
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Peter MacNeill represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 48 years in, and Peter is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Peter MacNeill appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Peter. Life in a Year is the clearest case: a film rated 7.9 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 horror, fantasy, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Guillermo del Toro, Mitja Okorn, Evan Morgan and others, Peter MacNeill 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.
Life in a Year (2020) as James Maxwell · Frankenstein (2025) as Professor Maurus · Cinderella Man (2005) as Electric Man
Career snapshot
Ranked #12245 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
1977–2025
Career length
48 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.9
Life in a Year
Average Nutevio score
6.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.2
Life in a Year
Most frequent director
Guillermo del Toro
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Guillermo del Toro
Most common genre
Drama
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 55m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.0
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
7.0
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
7.3 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Cinderella Man, A History of Violence — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
7.3
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
7.4
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1970s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Rabid.
Most productive era
2020s
4 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 | 1970s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.91 film | 7.32 films | — | 7.34 films |
| Action | — | — | — | 5.61 film | — |
| Thriller | — | — | 7.21 film | 5.61 film | 6.91 film |
| Comedy | — | 6.91 film | — | — | 6.61 film |
| Crime | — | — | 7.21 film | 5.61 film | 6.91 film |
| Romance | — | — | 7.41 film | — | 7.91 film |
| Horror | 6.41 film | — | — | 5.62 films | 7.61 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1977Rabid
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Loader.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2020Life in a Year
7.9 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
2025Frankenstein
The current state of the argument, as Professor Maurus.
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.
10 of 10 films
as James Maxwell
Directed by Mitja Okorn
as Professor Maurus
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
as Sheriff Sam Carney
Directed by David Cronenberg
as Electric Man
Directed by Ron Howard
as Judge Kimball
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
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
James Maxwell
Life in a Year (2020)
Performance score7.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. James Maxwell gives Peter MacNeill a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Professor Maurus
Frankenstein (2025)
Performance score7.4
Frankenstein asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Professor Maurus is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Sheriff Sam Carney
A History of Violence (2005)
Performance score7.3
A History of Violence asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Sheriff Sam Carney is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Electric Man
Cinderella Man (2005)
Performance score7.2
Cinderella Man asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Electric Man 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 James Maxwell
Start here. Life in a Year is the clearest statement of what Peter MacNeill does — accessible, 107 minutes, and rated 7.9 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.
A History of Violence (2005)
Keeps the drama register of Life in a Year but asks for a colder reading of it.
Cinderella Man (2005)
Keeps the drama register of A History of Violence but asks for a colder reading of it.
Nightmare Alley (2021)
Keeps the drama register of Cinderella Man but asks for a colder reading of it.
Frankenstein (2025)
Same director as Nightmare Alley, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
David Cronenberg
Director
2 films together
Notably A History of Violence
Guillermo del Toro
Director
2 films together
Notably Frankenstein
Mark Steven Johnson
Director
1 film together
Notably Simon Birch
Ron Howard
Director
1 film together
Notably Cinderella Man
Evan Morgan
Director
1 film together
Notably The Kid Detective
Mitja Okorn
Director
1 film together
Notably Life in a Year
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Guillermo del Toro
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
FrankensteinDavid Cronenberg
Director
2 films together · 6.8 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
A History of ViolenceMitja Okorn
Director
1 film together · 7.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Life in a YearRon Howard
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Cinderella ManMark Steven Johnson
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Simon BirchEvan Morgan
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 Kid DetectiveSix 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
Life in a Year
as James Maxwell
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Life in a Year
as James Maxwell
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Life in a Year
as James Maxwell
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Cinderella Man
as Electric Man
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Life in a Year
as James Maxwell
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 MacNeill 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
48 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
7 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
Frankenstein
as Professor Maurus
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Frankenstein
as Professor Maurus
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Life in a Year
as James Maxwell
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Regression
as Police Chief Cleveland
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Life in a Year
as James Maxwell
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
She Never Died
as Godfrey
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Life in a Year
as James Maxwell
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Rabid
as Loader
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Reference
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