Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Richard Clifford appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Richard. Zack Snyder's Justice League is the clearest case: a film rated 8.2 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, drama, action. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Wash Westmoreland, Zack Snyder, Kenneth Branagh and others, Richard Clifford 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.
Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021) as French Archaeologist · Heartstopper Forever (2026) as Len · Murder on the Orient Express (2017) as Maître d'
Career snapshot
A Nutevio catalogue profile for Richard Clifford.
Films in Nutevio
10
1989–2026
Career length
37 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.2
Zack Snyder's Justice League
Average Nutevio score
6.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.1
Zack Snyder's Justice League
Most frequent director
Kenneth Branagh
4 films together
Longest collaboration
4×
With Kenneth Branagh
Most common genre
Drama
8 titles
Average runtime
2h 7m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.1
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
6.8
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
2020s
7.6 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Heartstopper Forever, Zack Snyder's Justice League — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
7.6
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
7.7
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. Henry V.
Most productive era
2010s
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 | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.91 film | 6.72 films | 6.31 film | 6.83 films | 7.01 film |
| Action | — | — | — | 6.31 film | 8.21 film |
| Comedy | — | 6.81 film | — | — | — |
| Crime | — | — | — | 6.91 film | — |
| Romance | — | 6.72 films | 6.31 film | 6.71 film | 7.01 film |
| Horror | — | 6.51 film | — | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1989Henry V
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Duke Charles of Orleans.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2021Zack Snyder's Justice League
8.2 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 Len.
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 French Archaeologist
Directed by Zack Snyder
as Maître d'
Directed by Kenneth Branagh
as Toy Shop Manager
Directed by Simon Curtis
as Duke Charles of Orleans
Directed by Kenneth Branagh
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
French Archaeologist
Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021)
Performance score7.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. French Archaeologist gives Richard Clifford a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Len
Heartstopper Forever (2026)
Performance score6.9
Heartstopper Forever asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Len is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Maître d'
Murder on the Orient Express (2017)
Performance score6.8
Murder on the Orient Express asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Maître d' is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Toy Shop Manager
Goodbye Christopher Robin (2017)
Performance score6.8
Goodbye Christopher Robin asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Toy Shop Manager 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 French Archaeologist
Start here. Zack Snyder's Justice League is the clearest statement of what Richard Clifford does — accessible, 242 minutes, and rated 8.2 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Richard 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.
Henry V (1989)
A deliberate change of key after Zack Snyder's Justice League — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Murder on the Orient Express (2017)
Same director as Henry V, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Goodbye Christopher Robin (2017)
Keeps the drama register of Murder on the Orient Express but asks for a colder reading of it.
Heartstopper Forever (2026)
Keeps the drama register of Goodbye Christopher Robin but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Kenneth Branagh
Director
4 films together
Notably Murder on the Orient Express
Simon Curtis
Director
2 films together
Notably Goodbye Christopher Robin
Zack Snyder
Director
2 films together
Notably Zack Snyder's Justice League
John Maybury
Director
1 film together
Notably The Edge of Love
Wash Westmoreland
Director
1 film together
Notably Heartstopper Forever
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Kenneth Branagh
Director
4 films together · 6.8 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 4 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Murder on the Orient ExpressZack Snyder
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
Zack Snyder's Justice LeagueSimon Curtis
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
Goodbye Christopher RobinWash Westmoreland
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Heartstopper ForeverJohn Maybury
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Edge of LoveSix 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
Henry V
as Duke Charles of Orleans
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Heartstopper Forever
as Len
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Zack Snyder's Justice League
as French Archaeologist
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Zack Snyder's Justice League
as French Archaeologist
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Zack Snyder's Justice League
as French Archaeologist
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. Richard Clifford 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
37 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Drama Legend
Awarded
8 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
Zack Snyder's Justice League
as French Archaeologist
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Zack Snyder's Justice League
as French Archaeologist
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Heartstopper Forever
as Len
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Murder on the Orient Express
as Maître d'
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Zack Snyder's Justice League
as French Archaeologist
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Zack Snyder's Justice League
as French Archaeologist
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Much Ado About Nothing
as Conrade
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Justice League
as German Archaeologist
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
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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