Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#20653
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Sam Quinn 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.
Sam Quinn appears in 7 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Sam. Only the Brave is the clearest case: a film rated 7.5 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 western, comedy, crime. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Ari Aster, Joseph Kosinski, Roland Emmerich and others, Sam Quinn 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.
Only the Brave (2017) as Grant McKee · Eddington (2025) as Protest Leader · How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2023) as Geoff the Documentary Filmmaker
Career snapshot
Ranked #20653 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
7
2014–2025
Career length
11 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.5
Only the Brave
Average Nutevio score
5.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.5
Only the Brave
Most frequent director
Ari Aster
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Ari Aster
Most common genre
Drama
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 45m
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
6.1
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
2010s
6.2 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Only the Brave, Independence Day: Resurgence, Jane Got a Gun — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.2
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.2
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2010s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Only the Brave, Independence Day: Resurgence, Jane Got a Gun.
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 | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.53 films | 6.41 film |
| Action | 5.62 films | — |
| Thriller | 6.11 film | 3.22 films |
| Comedy | — | 6.51 film |
| Crime | — | 6.52 films |
| Horror | — | 0.01 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2014Transcendence
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Meth Head #2.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2017Only the Brave
7.5 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
2025Grunge
The current state of the argument, as Glen.
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.
7 of 7 films
as Grant McKee
Directed by Joseph Kosinski
as Geoff the Documentary Filmmaker
Directed by Unknown
as Radar Officer
Directed by Roland Emmerich
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
Grant McKee
Only the Brave (2017)
Performance score7.3
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Grant McKee gives Sam Quinn a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Protest Leader
Eddington (2025)
Performance score6.5
Eddington asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Protest Leader is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Glen
Grunge (2025)
Performance score6.5
Grunge asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Glen is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Geoff the Documentary Filmmaker
How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2023)
Performance score6.5
How to Blow Up a Pipeline asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Geoff the Documentary Filmmaker 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 Grant McKee
Start here. Only the Brave is the clearest statement of what Sam Quinn does — accessible, 133 minutes, and rated 7.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Sam 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.
Independence Day: Resurgence (2016)
A deliberate change of key after Only the Brave — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2023)
A deliberate change of key after Independence Day: Resurgence — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Eddington (2025)
Keeps the crime register of How to Blow Up a Pipeline but asks for a colder reading of it.
Grunge (2025)
A deliberate change of key after Eddington — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Wally Pfister
Director
1 film together
Notably Transcendence
Gavin O'Connor
Director
1 film together
Notably Jane Got a Gun
Roland Emmerich
Director
1 film together
Notably Independence Day: Resurgence
Joseph Kosinski
Director
1 film together
Notably Only the Brave
Ari Aster
Director
1 film together
Notably Eddington
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Joseph Kosinski
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Only the BraveAri Aster
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
EddingtonWally Pfister
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
TranscendenceGavin O'Connor
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Jane Got a GunRoland Emmerich
Director
1 film together · 5.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Independence Day: ResurgenceSix 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
Only the Brave
as Grant McKee
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Only the Brave
as Grant McKee
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Only the Brave
as Grant McKee
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Eddington
as Protest Leader
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Only the Brave
as Grant McKee
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. Sam Quinn 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
4 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
Only the Brave
as Grant McKee
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
How to Blow Up a Pipeline
as Geoff the Documentary Filmmaker
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Only the Brave
as Grant McKee
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Transcendence
as Meth Head #2
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Only the Brave
as Grant McKee
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Jane Got a Gun
as Slow Jeremiah
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Only the Brave
as Grant McKee
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Independence Day: Resurgence
as Radar Officer
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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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.
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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