Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#40008
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Phillip Jarrett represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 31 years in, and Phillip is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Phillip Jarrett appears in 8 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Phillip. The Hurricane is the clearest case: a film rated 7.3 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 romance, tv movie, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Amyn Kaderali, Roland Emmerich, Danny DeVito and others, Phillip Jarrett 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 Hurricane (1999) as Soldier #1 in U.S.O. Club · The Day After Tomorrow (2004) as Campbell · Grounded for Christmas (2019) as Cabbie
Career snapshot
Ranked #40008 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
8
1988–2019
Career length
31 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.3
The Hurricane
Average Nutevio score
6.3
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.4
The Hurricane
Most frequent director
Amyn Kaderali
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Amyn Kaderali
Most common genre
Thriller
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 47m
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
6.5
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
6.6 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. The Hurricane, Darkman II: The Return of Durant — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
6.6
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
6.5
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1980s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Short Circuit 2.
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 | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.31 film | 7.31 film | 6.11 film | 6.01 film |
| Action | — | 5.91 film | 6.21 film | — |
| Thriller | — | 5.91 film | 6.33 films | 6.01 film |
| Comedy | 6.31 film | — | 6.11 film | — |
| Crime | — | — | 6.22 films | — |
| Romance | — | — | — | 6.31 film |
| Horror | — | 5.91 film | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1988Short Circuit 2
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Card Hustler.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1999The Hurricane
7.3 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
The current state of the argument, as Cabbie.
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.
8 of 8 films
as Soldier #1 in U.S.O. Club
Directed by Norman Jewison
as Campbell
Directed by Roland Emmerich
as Antonio
Directed by Unknown
as Reporter #3
Directed by Danny DeVito
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
Soldier #1 in U.S.O. Club
The Hurricane (1999)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Soldier #1 in U.S.O. Club gives Phillip Jarrett a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Campbell
The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
Performance score6.6
The Day After Tomorrow asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Campbell is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Cabbie
Grounded for Christmas (2019)
Performance score6.5
Grounded for Christmas asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Cabbie is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Antonio
Penthouse North (2013)
Performance score6.5
Penthouse North asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Antonio 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 Soldier #1 in U.S.O. Club
Start here. The Hurricane is the clearest statement of what Phillip Jarrett does — accessible, 146 minutes, and rated 7.3 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Phillip 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.
Death to Smoochy (2002)
Keeps the drama register of The Hurricane but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
Keeps the thriller register of Death to Smoochy but asks for a colder reading of it.
Penthouse North (2013)
Keeps the thriller register of The Day After Tomorrow but asks for a colder reading of it.
Grounded for Christmas (2019)
A deliberate change of key after Penthouse North — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Kenneth Johnson
Director
1 film together
Notably Short Circuit 2
Bradford May
Director
1 film together
Notably Darkman II: The Return of Durant
Norman Jewison
Director
1 film together
Notably The Hurricane
Andrzej Bartkowiak
Director
1 film together
Notably Exit Wounds
Danny DeVito
Director
1 film together
Notably Death to Smoochy
Roland Emmerich
Director
1 film together
Notably The Day After Tomorrow
Amyn Kaderali
Director
1 film together
Notably Grounded for Christmas
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Norman Jewison
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The HurricaneRoland Emmerich
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Day After TomorrowAmyn Kaderali
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Grounded for ChristmasKenneth Johnson
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Short Circuit 2Andrzej Bartkowiak
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Exit WoundsDanny DeVito
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Death to SmoochyBradford May
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Darkman II: The Return of DurantSix 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 Hurricane
as Soldier #1 in U.S.O. Club
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 Hurricane
as Soldier #1 in U.S.O. Club
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 Hurricane
as Soldier #1 in U.S.O. Club
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Day After Tomorrow
as Campbell
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Hurricane
as Soldier #1 in U.S.O. Club
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. Phillip Jarrett 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
31 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.
Thriller Legend
Awarded
5 catalogue titles in thriller, 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 Hurricane
as Soldier #1 in U.S.O. Club
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Exit Wounds
as SWAT Team Member
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Hurricane
as Soldier #1 in U.S.O. Club
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Exit Wounds
as SWAT Team Member
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Hurricane
as Soldier #1 in U.S.O. Club
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Exit Wounds
as SWAT Team Member
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Death to Smoochy
as Reporter #3
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Darkman II: The Return of Durant
as Dan
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
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Reference
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