Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#5648
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Scott Bakula represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 29 years in, and Scott is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Scott Bakula appears in 8 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Scott. NCISverse: The First 1,000 is the clearest case: a film rated 9.0 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 documentary, science fiction, horror. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Duncan Jones, Irwin Winkler, Sam Mendes and others, Scott Bakula 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.
NCISverse: The First 1,000 (2024) as Self · American Beauty (1999) as Jim Olmeyer · Source Code (2011) as Colter's Father (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #5648 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
8
1995–2024
Career length
29 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
9.0
NCISverse: The First 1,000
Average Nutevio score
6.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
9.0
NCISverse: The First 1,000
Most frequent director
Duncan Jones
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Duncan Jones
Most common genre
Drama
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 38m
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
6.9
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
7.3 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Source Code — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.3
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
7.3
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. American Beauty, Cats Don't Dance, Lord of Illusions.
Most productive era
1990s
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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.02 films | 6.72 films | — | — |
| Thriller | — | — | 7.31 film | — |
| Comedy | 6.81 film | 6.21 film | — | — |
| Crime | — | 6.21 film | — | — |
| Horror | 5.91 film | — | — | 5.11 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Harry D'Amour.
First Nutevio masterpiece · Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2024NCISverse: The First 1,000
The first film here to clear 9.0 on our scale — a threshold fewer than one film in ten reaches. 9.0 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. The current state of the argument, as Self.
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 Jim Olmeyer
Directed by Sam Mendes
as Danny (voice)
Directed by Mark Dindal
as Colter's Father (voice)
Directed by Duncan Jones
as Officer Kurt Walker
Directed by Irwin Winkler
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
Self
NCISverse: The First 1,000 (2024)
Performance score8.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Self gives Scott Bakula a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Jim Olmeyer
American Beauty (1999)
Performance score7.8
American Beauty asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Jim Olmeyer is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Danny (voice)
Cats Don't Dance (1997)
Performance score7.4
Cats Don't Dance asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Danny (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Colter's Father (voice)
Source Code (2011)
Performance score7.2
Source Code asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Colter's Father (voice) 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
Start here. NCISverse: The First 1,000 is the clearest statement of what Scott Bakula does — accessible, 60 minutes, and rated 9.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Scott 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.
Cats Don't Dance (1997)
A deliberate change of key after NCISverse: The First 1,000 — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
American Beauty (1999)
A deliberate change of key after Cats Don't Dance — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Life as a House (2001)
Keeps the drama register of American Beauty but asks for a colder reading of it.
Source Code (2011)
A deliberate change of key after Life as a House — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Clive Barker
Director
1 film together
Notably Lord of Illusions
Mark Dindal
Director
1 film together
Notably Cats Don't Dance
Sam Mendes
Director
1 film together
Notably American Beauty
Irwin Winkler
Director
1 film together
Notably Life as a House
Duncan Jones
Director
1 film together
Notably Source Code
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Sam Mendes
Director
1 film together · 8.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
American BeautyDuncan Jones
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Source CodeIrwin Winkler
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Life as a HouseMark Dindal
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Cats Don't DanceClive Barker
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Lord of IllusionsSix 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
American Beauty
as Jim Olmeyer
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Cats Don't Dance
as Danny (voice)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
NCISverse: The First 1,000
as Self
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Source Code
as Colter's Father (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
NCISverse: The First 1,000
as Self
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. Scott Bakula 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
29 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
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
NCISverse: The First 1,000
as Self
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
NCISverse: The First 1,000
as Self
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Cats Don't Dance
as Danny (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Source Code
as Colter's Father (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
NCISverse: The First 1,000
as Self
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
NCISverse: The First 1,000
as Self
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Cats Don't Dance
as Danny (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
American Beauty
as Jim Olmeyer
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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Reference
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