Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#45255
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Sal Rendino represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 31 years in, and Sal is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Sal Rendino appears in 16 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Sal. Dumb Money is the clearest case: a film rated 6.7 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, quiet performance, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for horror, thriller, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Paco Plaza, Craig Gillespie, Kevin Connolly and others, Sal Rendino 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.
Dumb Money (2023) as Ken's Lawyer · V/H/S/Halloween (2025) as Local Cop (segment "Kidprint") · One Moment (2021) as Rick McGuinness
Career snapshot
Ranked #45255 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
16
1994–2025
Career length
31 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.7
Dumb Money
Average Nutevio score
4.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
6.7
Dumb Money
Most frequent director
Paco Plaza
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Paco Plaza
Most common genre
Drama
10 titles
Average runtime
1h 25m
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
6.0 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Volcano, Renaissance Man — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
6.0
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
6.0
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. Volcano, Renaissance Man.
Most productive era
2020s
12 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 | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.02 films | 5.31 film | 3.47 films |
| Action | 6.01 film | — | 5.11 film |
| Thriller | 6.01 film | 5.62 films | 5.84 films |
| Comedy | 6.11 film | — | 4.54 films |
| Crime | — | 5.31 film | 3.73 films |
| Horror | — | 5.91 film | 6.22 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1994Renaissance Man
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Laundry Private #2.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2023Dumb Money
6.7 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
2025Fog of War
The current state of the argument, as Captain Quinn.
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.
16 of 16 films
as Ken's Lawyer
Directed by Craig Gillespie
as Local Cop (segment "Kidprint")
Directed by Paco Plaza
as Captain Quinn
Directed by Unknown
as Dillon Cole
Directed by Unknown
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
Ken's Lawyer
Dumb Money (2023)
Performance score6.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Ken's Lawyer gives Sal Rendino a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Local Cop (segment "Kidprint")
V/H/S/Halloween (2025)
Performance score6.5
V/H/S/Halloween asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Local Cop (segment "Kidprint") is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Captain Quinn
Fog of War (2025)
Performance score6.5
Fog of War asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Captain Quinn is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
John
Hideaway Baby (2024)
Performance score6.5
Hideaway Baby asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. John 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 Ken's Lawyer
Start here. Dumb Money is the clearest statement of what Sal Rendino does — accessible, 105 minutes, and rated 6.7 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Sal 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.
Hideaway Baby (2024)
Keeps the drama register of Dumb Money but asks for a colder reading of it.
Bloodline Killer (2024)
Same director as Hideaway Baby, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
V/H/S/Halloween (2025)
Keeps the horror register of Bloodline Killer but asks for a colder reading of it.
Fog of War (2025)
Keeps the thriller register of V/H/S/Halloween but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Penny Marshall
Director
1 film together
Notably Renaissance Man
Mick Jackson
Director
1 film together
Notably Volcano
Kevin Connolly
Director
1 film together
Notably Gotti
Craig Gillespie
Director
1 film together
Notably Dumb Money
Paco Plaza
Director
1 film together
Notably V/H/S/Halloween
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Craig Gillespie
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Dumb MoneyPaco Plaza
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
V/H/S/HalloweenPenny Marshall
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Renaissance ManMick Jackson
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
VolcanoKevin Connolly
Director
1 film together · 5.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
GottiSix 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
Dumb Money
as Ken's Lawyer
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Dumb Money
as Ken's Lawyer
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Dumb Money
as Ken's Lawyer
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Dumb Money
as Ken's Lawyer
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Dumb Money
as Ken's Lawyer
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. Sal Rendino 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
10 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
Dumb Money
as Ken's Lawyer
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
V/H/S/Halloween
as Local Cop (segment "Kidprint")
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Dumb Money
as Ken's Lawyer
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Gotti
as Vincent 'Chin' Gigante
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Volcano
as Storm Drain Worker #1
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Volcano
as Storm Drain Worker #1
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Dumb Money
as Ken's Lawyer
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
V/H/S/Halloween
as Local Cop (segment "Kidprint")
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Reference
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