Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#4407
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Scott Lawrence represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 25 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 Lawrence appears in 6 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Scott. Avatar is the clearest case: a film rated 7.9 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, screen presence. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for action, comedy, music. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Michael Dowse, Dan Fogelman, J.J. Abrams and others, Scott Lawrence 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.
Avatar (2009) as Venture Star Crew Chief · Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) as U.S.S. Vengeance Officer · Danny Collins (2015) as Dr. Ryan Kurtz
Career snapshot
Ranked #4407 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
6
1994–2019
Career length
25 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.9
Avatar
Average Nutevio score
6.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.6
Avatar
Most frequent director
Michael Dowse
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Michael Dowse
Most common genre
Action
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 56m
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
6.6
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
7.9 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Avatar — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
7.9
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
7.6
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. Timecop.
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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | — | 6.42 films |
| Action | 6.01 film | 7.91 film | 6.92 films |
| Thriller | 6.01 film | — | — |
| Comedy | — | — | 6.72 films |
| Romance | — | — | 6.11 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1994Timecop
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Spota.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2009Avatar
7.9 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
2019Stuber
The current state of the argument, as Dr. Branch.
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.
6 of 6 films
as Venture Star Crew Chief
Directed by James Cameron
as U.S.S. Vengeance Officer
Directed by J.J. Abrams
as Dr. Branch
Directed by Michael Dowse
as Dr. Ryan Kurtz
Directed by Dan Fogelman
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
Venture Star Crew Chief
Avatar (2009)
Performance score7.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Venture Star Crew Chief gives Scott Lawrence a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
U.S.S. Vengeance Officer
Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)
Performance score7.2
Star Trek Into Darkness asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. U.S.S. Vengeance Officer is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Dr. Branch
Stuber (2019)
Performance score6.6
Stuber asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Dr. Branch is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Dr. Ryan Kurtz
Danny Collins (2015)
Performance score6.6
Danny Collins asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Dr. Ryan Kurtz 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 Venture Star Crew Chief
Start here. Avatar is the clearest statement of what Scott Lawrence does — accessible, 162 minutes, and rated 7.9 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.
Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)
Keeps the action register of Avatar but asks for a colder reading of it.
Danny Collins (2015)
A deliberate change of key after Star Trek Into Darkness — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Equals (2015)
Keeps the drama register of Danny Collins but asks for a colder reading of it.
Stuber (2019)
A deliberate change of key after Equals — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Peter Hyams
Director
1 film together
Notably Timecop
James Cameron
Director
1 film together
Notably Avatar
J.J. Abrams
Director
1 film together
Notably Star Trek Into Darkness
Dan Fogelman
Director
1 film together
Notably Danny Collins
Michael Dowse
Director
1 film together
Notably Stuber
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
James Cameron
Director
1 film together · 7.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
AvatarJ.J. Abrams
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Star Trek Into DarknessDan Fogelman
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Danny CollinsMichael Dowse
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
StuberPeter Hyams
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
TimecopSix 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
Avatar
as Venture Star Crew Chief
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Equals
as Mark
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Avatar
as Venture Star Crew Chief
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Star Trek Into Darkness
as U.S.S. Vengeance Officer
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Avatar
as Venture Star Crew Chief
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 Lawrence 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
25 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.
Action Legend
Awarded
4 catalogue titles in action, 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
Avatar
as Venture Star Crew Chief
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Avatar
as Venture Star Crew Chief
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Equals
as Mark
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Avatar
as Venture Star Crew Chief
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Avatar
as Venture Star Crew Chief
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Star Trek Into Darkness
as U.S.S. Vengeance Officer
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Danny Collins
as Dr. Ryan Kurtz
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Avatar
as Venture Star Crew Chief
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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Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
Edward Norton
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
Tom Wilkinson
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Elliot Page
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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