Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#41890
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Phil Cornwell works on quiet performance 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.
Phil Cornwell appears in 5 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Phil. Gorillaz: Reject False Icons is the clearest case: a film rated 7.6 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, versatility, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for war, drama, history. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Ridley Scott, Nigel Cole, Amy Heckerling and others, Phil Cornwell 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.
Gorillaz: Reject False Icons (2019) as Murdoc Niccals [Gorillaz] (voice) · Made in Dagenham (2010) as Dave · Scoop (2006) as Tenant
Career snapshot
Ranked #41890 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
5
2006–2023
Career length
17 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.6
Gorillaz: Reject False Icons
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.6
Gorillaz: Reject False Icons
Most frequent director
Ridley Scott
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Ridley Scott
Most common genre
Drama
3 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
6.8
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
7.2 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Gorillaz: Reject False Icons, Made in Dagenham — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.2
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. I Could Never Be Your Woman, Scoop.
Most productive era
2000s
2 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 | 5.91 film | 6.71 film | 6.31 film |
| Comedy | 6.32 films | 6.71 film | — |
| Romance | 5.91 film | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2006Scoop
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Tenant.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2019Gorillaz: Reject False Icons
7.6 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
2023Napoleon
The current state of the argument, as Sanson the Bourreau.
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 Murdoc Niccals [Gorillaz] (voice)
Directed by Unknown
as Dave
Directed by Nigel Cole
as Tenant
Directed by Woody Allen
as Sanson the Bourreau
Directed by Ridley Scott
as Cameraman
Directed by Amy Heckerling
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
Murdoc Niccals [Gorillaz] (voice)
Gorillaz: Reject False Icons (2019)
Performance score7.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Murdoc Niccals [Gorillaz] (voice) gives Phil Cornwell a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Dave
Made in Dagenham (2010)
Performance score6.6
Made in Dagenham asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Dave is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Tenant
Scoop (2006)
Performance score6.6
Scoop asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Tenant is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Sanson the Bourreau
Napoleon (2023)
Performance score6.5
Napoleon asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Sanson the Bourreau 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 Murdoc Niccals [Gorillaz] (voice)
Start here. Gorillaz: Reject False Icons is the clearest statement of what Phil Cornwell does — accessible, 95 minutes, and rated 7.6 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Phil 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.
Scoop (2006)
A deliberate change of key after Gorillaz: Reject False Icons — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
I Could Never Be Your Woman (2007)
Keeps the comedy register of Scoop but asks for a colder reading of it.
Made in Dagenham (2010)
Keeps the comedy register of I Could Never Be Your Woman but asks for a colder reading of it.
Napoleon (2023)
Keeps the drama register of Made in Dagenham but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Nigel Cole
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Made in DagenhamWoody Allen
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Scoop
Ridley Scott
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
NapoleonAmy Heckerling
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
I Could Never Be Your WomanSix 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
Gorillaz: Reject False Icons
as Murdoc Niccals [Gorillaz] (voice)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
I Could Never Be Your Woman
as Cameraman
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Gorillaz: Reject False Icons
as Murdoc Niccals [Gorillaz] (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Scoop
as Tenant
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Gorillaz: Reject False Icons
as Murdoc Niccals [Gorillaz] (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. Phil Cornwell 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.
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
3 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
Gorillaz: Reject False Icons
as Murdoc Niccals [Gorillaz] (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Gorillaz: Reject False Icons
as Murdoc Niccals [Gorillaz] (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
I Could Never Be Your Woman
as Cameraman
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Scoop
as Tenant
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Gorillaz: Reject False Icons
as Murdoc Niccals [Gorillaz] (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Gorillaz: Reject False Icons
as Murdoc Niccals [Gorillaz] (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Made in Dagenham
as Dave
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
I Could Never Be Your Woman
as Cameraman
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 history
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Built a career in the same territory: comedy and drama
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
David Dastmalchian
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Have your say
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Reference
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