Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#7757
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Riccardo Scamarcio 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.
Riccardo Scamarcio appears in 25 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Riccardo. We Are Cinema is the clearest case: a film rated 9.5 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 drama, romance, war. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Mel Gibson, Arnaldo Catinari, Stefano Sardo and others, Riccardo Scamarcio 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.
We Are Cinema (2021) as Self (archive footage) · The Best of Youth (2003) as Andrea Utano · John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017) as Santino D'Antonio
Career snapshot
Ranked #7757 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
25
2003–2027
Career length
24 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
9.5
We Are Cinema
Average Nutevio score
5.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
9.5
We Are Cinema
Most frequent director
Renato De Maria
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Renato De Maria
Most common genre
Drama
16 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
2000s
6.5 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Manuale d'amore 2 (capitoli successivi), The Best of Youth — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.5
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.7
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. Manuale d'amore 2 (capitoli successivi), The Best of Youth.
Most productive era
2020s
14 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 | 6.52 films | 6.05 films | 5.39 films |
| Action | — | 7.31 film | 5.01 film |
| Thriller | — | 6.33 films | 5.95 films |
| Comedy | 5.41 film | 5.52 films | 4.11 film |
| Crime | — | 6.82 films | 6.42 films |
| Romance | 6.52 films | 5.73 films | 5.53 films |
| Horror | — | 5.31 film | 5.51 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Andrea Utano.
First Nutevio masterpiece · Highest rated performance · Career peak
2021We Are Cinema
The first film here to clear 9.0 on our scale — a threshold fewer than one film in ten reaches. 9.5 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
2027The Resurrection of the Christ: Part One
The current state of the argument, as Pontius Pilate.
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.
25 of 25 films
as Self (archive footage)
Directed by Unknown
as Santino D'Antonio
Directed by Chad Stahelski
as Andrea Utano
Directed by Marco Tullio Giordana
as Santo Russo
Directed by Renato De Maria
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
Self (archive footage)
We Are Cinema (2021)
Performance score9.1
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Self (archive footage) gives Riccardo Scamarcio a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Santino D'Antonio
John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)
Performance score7.4
John Wick: Chapter 2 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Santino D'Antonio is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Andrea Utano
The Best of Youth (2003)
Performance score7.3
The Best of Youth asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Andrea Utano is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Caravaggio
Caravaggio's Shadow (2022)
Performance score7.1
Caravaggio's Shadow asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Caravaggio 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 Self (archive footage)
Start here. We Are Cinema is the clearest statement of what Riccardo Scamarcio does — accessible, 71 minutes, and rated 9.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Riccardo 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 Best of Youth (2003)
A deliberate change of key after We Are Cinema — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)
A deliberate change of key after The Best of Youth — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Ruthless (2019)
Keeps the crime register of John Wick: Chapter 2 but asks for a colder reading of it.
Caravaggio's Shadow (2022)
Keeps the drama register of The Ruthless but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Renato De Maria
Director
2 films together
Notably The Ruthless
Marco Tullio Giordana
Director
1 film together
Notably The Best of Youth
Woody Allen
Director
1 film together
Notably To Rome with Love
Richard Laxton
Director
1 film together
Notably Effie Gray
Paul Haggis
Director
1 film together
Notably Third Person
John Wells
Director
1 film together
Notably Burnt
Chad Stahelski
Director
1 film together
Notably John Wick: Chapter 2
Nanni Moretti
Director
1 film together
Notably Three Floors
Michele Placido
Director
1 film together
Notably Caravaggio's Shadow
Kenneth Branagh
Director
1 film together
Notably A Haunting in Venice
Johnny Depp
Director
1 film together
Notably Modi, Three Days on the Wing of Madness
Stefano Sardo
Director
1 film together
Notably Close to Me
Arnaldo Catinari
Director
1 film together
Notably The Poet And The Spy
Mel Gibson
Director
1 film together
Notably The Resurrection of the Christ: Part One
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Renato De Maria
Director
2 films together · 5.9 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The RuthlessMarco Tullio Giordana
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Best of YouthChad Stahelski
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
John Wick: Chapter 2Kenneth Branagh
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Haunting in VeniceJohn Wells
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BurntMichele Placido
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Caravaggio's ShadowNanni Moretti
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Three FloorsJohnny Depp
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Modi, Three Days on the Wing of MadnessRichard Laxton
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Effie GrayPaul Haggis
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Third PersonStefano Sardo
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Close to MeWoody Allen
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
To Rome with LoveArnaldo Catinari
Director
1 film together · 5.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Poet And The SpyMel Gibson
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Resurrection of the Christ: Part OneSix 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
We Are Cinema
as Self (archive footage)
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 Best of Youth
as Andrea Utano
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
We Are Cinema
as Self (archive footage)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
We Are Cinema
as Self (archive footage)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
We Are Cinema
as Self (archive footage)
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. Riccardo Scamarcio 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
24 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
16 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
We Are Cinema
as Self (archive footage)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
We Are Cinema
as Self (archive footage)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Last Paradiso
as Ciccio Paradiso
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Translators
as Dario Farelli
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
We Are Cinema
as Self (archive footage)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
John Wick: Chapter 2
as Santino D'Antonio
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Modi, Three Days on the Wing of Madness
as Amedeo Modigliani
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Vanished into the Night
as Pietro
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
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Robert Downey Jr.
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Have your say
Community
Which Riccardo Scamarcio performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
Join the conversation
Reference
Continue exploring
Trending performers
Directors they work with
Collections to read next
