Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#13033
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Phil McKee 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.
Phil McKee appears in 4 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Phil. Brave 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 versatility, transformation, drama. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for fantasy, adventure, family. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Brenda Chapman, Louis Leterrier, Isaac Florentine and others, Phil McKee 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.
Brave (2012) as Additional Voices (voice) · The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999) as Red beard · The Shepherd: Border Patrol (2008) as Jed
Career snapshot
Ranked #13033 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
4
1999–2012
Career length
13 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.0
Brave
Average Nutevio score
6.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.0
Brave
Most frequent director
Brenda Chapman
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Brenda Chapman
Most common genre
Adventure
3 titles
Average runtime
1h 53m
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
6.3
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
1990s
6.5 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
6.5
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.5
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1990s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc.
Most productive era
2010s
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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.51 film | — | — |
| Action | 6.51 film | 6.11 film | 5.91 film |
| Thriller | — | 6.11 film | — |
| Crime | — | 6.11 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1999The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Red beard.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2012Brave
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. The current state of the argument, as Additional Voices (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.
4 of 4 films
as Additional Voices (voice)
Directed by Brenda Chapman
as Harbourmaster
Directed by Louis Leterrier
as Jed
Directed by Isaac Florentine
as Red beard
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
Additional Voices (voice)
Brave (2012)
Performance score6.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Additional Voices (voice) gives Phil McKee a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Harbourmaster
Clash of the Titans (2010)
Performance score6.5
Clash of the Titans asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Harbourmaster is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Jed
The Shepherd: Border Patrol (2008)
Performance score6.5
The Shepherd: Border Patrol asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Jed is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Red beard
The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999)
Performance score6.5
The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Red beard 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 Additional Voices (voice)
Start here. Brave is the clearest statement of what Phil McKee does — accessible, 93 minutes, and rated 7.0 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.
The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999)
Keeps the adventure register of Brave but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Shepherd: Border Patrol (2008)
Keeps the action register of The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc but asks for a colder reading of it.
Clash of the Titans (2010)
Keeps the action register of The Shepherd: Border Patrol but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Luc Besson
Director
1 film together
Notably The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc
Isaac Florentine
Director
1 film together
Notably The Shepherd: Border Patrol
Louis Leterrier
Director
1 film together
Notably Clash of the Titans
Brenda Chapman
Director
1 film together
Notably Brave
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Brenda Chapman
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BraveLuc 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 Messenger: The Story of Joan of ArcIsaac Florentine
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Shepherd: Border PatrolLouis Leterrier
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Clash of the TitansSix 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
Brave
as Additional Voices (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
Brave
as Additional Voices (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
Brave
as Additional Voices (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc
as Red beard
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Brave
as Additional Voices (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 McKee 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.
Adventure Legend
Awarded
3 catalogue titles in adventure, 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
Brave
as Additional Voices (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Shepherd: Border Patrol
as Jed
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Brave
as Additional Voices (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Brave
as Additional Voices (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Brave
as Additional Voices (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Clash of the Titans
as Harbourmaster
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Brave
as Additional Voices (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc
as Red beard
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
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
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Have your say
Community
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Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
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Reference
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