Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3851
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Seth Gilliam represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 27 years in, and Seth is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Seth Gilliam appears in 5 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Seth. Teen Wolf: The Movie 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 action, tv movie, fantasy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Russell Mulcahy, Wash Westmoreland, Marc Lawrence and others, Seth Gilliam 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.
Teen Wolf: The Movie (2023) as Dr. Alan Deaton · Still Alice (2014) as Frederic Johnson · Starship Troopers (1997) as Private Sugar Watkins
Career snapshot
Ranked #3851 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
5
1996–2023
Career length
27 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.5
Teen Wolf: The Movie
Average Nutevio score
6.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.5
Still Alice
Most frequent director
Russell Mulcahy
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Russell Mulcahy
Most common genre
Drama
3 titles
Average runtime
1h 58m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.0
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
6.7
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
7.5 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Still Alice — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.5
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
7.5
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. Starship Troopers, Courage Under Fire.
Most productive era
1990s
2 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 | 6.61 film | 5.41 film | 7.51 film | — |
| Action | 7.21 film | — | — | 7.51 film |
| Thriller | 6.92 films | — | — | — |
| Comedy | — | 5.41 film | — | — |
| Romance | — | 5.41 film | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Stephen Altameyer.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2014Still Alice
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
The current state of the argument, as Dr. Alan Deaton.
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.
5 of 5 films
as Frederic Johnson
Directed by Wash Westmoreland
as Dr. Alan Deaton
Directed by Russell Mulcahy
as Private Sugar Watkins
Directed by Paul Verhoeven
as Stephen Altameyer
Directed by Edward Zwick
as U.S. Marshal Lasky
Directed by Marc Lawrence
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
Frederic Johnson
Still Alice (2014)
Performance score7.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Frederic Johnson gives Seth Gilliam a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Dr. Alan Deaton
Teen Wolf: The Movie (2023)
Performance score7.3
Teen Wolf: The Movie asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Dr. Alan Deaton is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Private Sugar Watkins
Starship Troopers (1997)
Performance score7.1
Starship Troopers asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Private Sugar Watkins is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Stephen Altameyer
Courage Under Fire (1996)
Performance score6.6
Courage Under Fire asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Stephen Altameyer 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 Frederic Johnson
Start here. Still Alice is the clearest statement of what Seth Gilliam does — accessible, 101 minutes, and rated 7.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Seth 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.
Courage Under Fire (1996)
Keeps the drama register of Still Alice but asks for a colder reading of it.
Starship Troopers (1997)
Keeps the thriller register of Courage Under Fire but asks for a colder reading of it.
Did You Hear About the Morgans? (2009)
A deliberate change of key after Starship Troopers — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Teen Wolf: The Movie (2023)
A deliberate change of key after Did You Hear About the Morgans? — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Edward Zwick
Director
1 film together
Notably Courage Under Fire
Paul Verhoeven
Director
1 film together
Notably Starship Troopers
Marc Lawrence
Director
1 film together
Notably Did You Hear About the Morgans?
Wash Westmoreland
Director
1 film together
Notably Still Alice
Russell Mulcahy
Director
1 film together
Notably Teen Wolf: The Movie
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Russell Mulcahy
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Teen Wolf: The MovieWash Westmoreland
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Still AlicePaul Verhoeven
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Starship TroopersEdward Zwick
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Courage Under FireMarc Lawrence
Director
1 film together · 5.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Did You Hear About the Morgans?Six 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
Teen Wolf: The Movie
as Dr. Alan Deaton
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Did You Hear About the Morgans?
as U.S. Marshal Lasky
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Still Alice
as Frederic Johnson
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Teen Wolf: The Movie
as Dr. Alan Deaton
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Still Alice
as Frederic Johnson
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. Seth Gilliam 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
27 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
3 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
Teen Wolf: The Movie
as Dr. Alan Deaton
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Starship Troopers
as Private Sugar Watkins
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Did You Hear About the Morgans?
as U.S. Marshal Lasky
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Courage Under Fire
as Stephen Altameyer
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Teen Wolf: The Movie
as Dr. Alan Deaton
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Starship Troopers
as Private Sugar Watkins
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Did You Hear About the Morgans?
as U.S. Marshal Lasky
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Starship Troopers
as Private Sugar Watkins
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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