Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#183
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Simon Baker represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 26 years in, and Simon is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Simon Baker appears in 14 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Simon. L.A. Confidential is the clearest case: a film rated 7.8 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 mystery, crime, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Dan Mazer, J.C. Chandor, Daniel Waters and others, Simon Baker 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.
L.A. Confidential (1997) as Matt Reynolds · The Devil Wears Prada (2006) as Christian Thompson · Margin Call (2011) as Jared Cohen
Career snapshot
Ranked #183 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
14
1997–2023
Career length
26 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.8
L.A. Confidential
Average Nutevio score
6.3
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.8
L.A. Confidential
Most frequent director
Dan Mazer
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Dan Mazer
Most common genre
Drama
10 titles
Average runtime
1h 50m
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
6.4
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
7.1 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Ride with the Devil, L.A. Confidential — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
7.1
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
7.1
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. Ride with the Devil, L.A. Confidential.
Most productive era
2000s
6 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 | 6.41 film | 6.54 films | 6.32 films | 6.03 films |
| Action | — | 5.71 film | — | 6.41 film |
| Thriller | 7.81 film | 5.93 films | 6.32 films | 6.32 films |
| Comedy | — | 6.83 films | 5.51 film | — |
| Crime | 7.81 film | — | 5.81 film | 5.82 films |
| Romance | 6.41 film | 6.32 films | 5.51 film | — |
| Horror | — | 6.02 films | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Matt Reynolds. 7.8 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2023Limbo
The current state of the argument, as Travis Hurley.
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.
14 of 14 films
as Christian Thompson
Directed by David Frankel
as Matt Reynolds
Directed by Curtis Hanson
as Travis
Directed by Unknown
as Jared Cohen
Directed by J.C. Chandor
as Brian Kelly
Directed by Sanaa Hamri
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
Christian Thompson
The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Performance score7.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Christian Thompson gives Simon Baker a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Matt Reynolds
L.A. Confidential (1997)
Performance score7.6
L.A. Confidential asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Matt Reynolds is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Travis
High Ground (2021)
Performance score7.1
High Ground asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Travis is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Jared Cohen
Margin Call (2011)
Performance score7.1
Margin Call asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Jared Cohen 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 Christian Thompson
Start here. The Devil Wears Prada is the clearest statement of what Simon Baker does — accessible, 109 minutes, and rated 7.7 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Simon 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.
L.A. Confidential (1997)
A deliberate change of key after The Devil Wears Prada — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Something New (2006)
A deliberate change of key after L.A. Confidential — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Margin Call (2011)
Keeps the drama register of Something New but asks for a colder reading of it.
High Ground (2021)
Keeps the drama register of Margin Call but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Curtis Hanson
Director
1 film together
Notably L.A. Confidential
Ang Lee
Director
1 film together
Notably Ride with the Devil
Hideo Nakata
Director
1 film together
Notably The Ring Two
George A. Romero
Director
1 film together
Notably Land of the Dead
Sanaa Hamri
Director
1 film together
Notably Something New
David Frankel
Director
1 film together
Notably The Devil Wears Prada
Daniel Waters
Director
1 film together
Notably Sex and Death 101
J.C. Chandor
Director
1 film together
Notably Margin Call
Dan Mazer
Director
1 film together
Notably I Give It a Year
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Curtis Hanson
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
L.A. ConfidentialDavid Frankel
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Devil Wears PradaJ.C. Chandor
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Margin CallSanaa Hamri
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Something NewAng Lee
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Ride with the DevilGeorge A. Romero
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Land of the DeadDaniel Waters
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Sex and Death 101Hideo Nakata
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Ring TwoDan Mazer
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
I Give It a YearSix 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
L.A. Confidential
as Matt Reynolds
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Something New
as Brian Kelly
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
L.A. Confidential
as Matt Reynolds
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
L.A. Confidential
as Matt Reynolds
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Devil Wears Prada
as Christian Thompson
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. Simon Baker 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
26 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
L.A. Confidential
as Matt Reynolds
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
L.A. Confidential
as Matt Reynolds
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Something New
as Brian Kelly
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
L.A. Confidential
as Matt Reynolds
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
L.A. Confidential
as Matt Reynolds
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
High Ground
as Travis
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Something New
as Brian Kelly
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Devil Wears Prada
as Christian Thompson
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
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Reference
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