Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#10800
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Steven Robertson 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.
Steven Robertson appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Steven. Tell It to the Bees 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 romance, drama, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Danny Boyle, James McTeigue, Renny Harlin and others, Steven Robertson 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.
Tell It to the Bees (2019) as Jim · Inside I'm Dancing (2004) as Michael Connolly · Kingdom of Heaven (2005) as Angelic Priest
Career snapshot
Ranked #10800 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
2004–2019
Career length
15 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.5
Tell It to the Bees
Average Nutevio score
6.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.5
Tell It to the Bees
Most frequent director
Danny Boyle
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Danny Boyle
Most common genre
Drama
8 titles
Average runtime
1h 51m
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
2000s
7.0 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1974, Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1983, Elizabeth: The Golden Age — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
7.0
Across 5 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
7.0
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2000s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1974, Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1983, Elizabeth: The Golden Age.
Most productive era
2000s
5 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 | 2000s | 2010s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.05 films | 6.73 films |
| Action | 7.21 film | 6.02 films |
| Thriller | 6.82 films | 6.02 films |
| Comedy | — | 6.91 film |
| Crime | 6.82 films | 6.32 films |
| Romance | 6.71 film | 6.82 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Career peak
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Michael Connolly. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance · Most recent film
7.5 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. The current state of the argument, as Jim.
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.
10 of 10 films
as Angelic Priest
Directed by Ridley Scott
as Stoddart
Directed by Danny Boyle
as Bob Fraser
Directed by Anand Tucker
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
Michael Connolly
Inside I'm Dancing (2004)
Performance score7.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Michael Connolly gives Steven Robertson a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Jim
Tell It to the Bees (2019)
Performance score7.6
Tell It to the Bees asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Jim is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Angelic Priest
Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
Performance score7.1
Kingdom of Heaven asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Angelic Priest is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Stoddart
T2 Trainspotting (2017)
Performance score6.8
T2 Trainspotting asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Stoddart 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 Michael Connolly
Start here. Inside I'm Dancing is the clearest statement of what Steven Robertson does — accessible, 104 minutes, and rated 7.4 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Steven 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.
Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
Keeps the drama register of Inside I'm Dancing but asks for a colder reading of it.
Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1983 (2009)
Keeps the drama register of Kingdom of Heaven but asks for a colder reading of it.
T2 Trainspotting (2017)
Keeps the crime register of Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1983 but asks for a colder reading of it.
Tell It to the Bees (2019)
Keeps the drama register of T2 Trainspotting but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Ridley Scott
Director
1 film together
Notably Kingdom of Heaven
Shekhar Kapur
Director
1 film together
Notably Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Anand Tucker
Director
1 film together
Notably Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1983
Julian Jarrold
Director
1 film together
Notably Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1974
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Director
1 film together
Notably The Tourist
Renny Harlin
Director
1 film together
Notably 5 Days of War
James McTeigue
Director
1 film together
Notably Survivor
Danny Boyle
Director
1 film together
Notably T2 Trainspotting
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Ridley Scott
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Kingdom of HeavenDanny Boyle
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
T2 TrainspottingAnand Tucker
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1983Shekhar Kapur
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Elizabeth: The Golden AgeJulian Jarrold
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1974Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The TouristJames McTeigue
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SurvivorRenny Harlin
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
5 Days of WarSix 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
Tell It to the Bees
as Jim
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Tell It to the Bees
as Jim
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Inside I'm Dancing
as Michael Connolly
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Elizabeth: The Golden Age
as Sir Francis Throckmorton
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Inside I'm Dancing
as Michael Connolly
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. Steven Robertson 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
8 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
Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1983
as Bob Fraser
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1983
as Bob Fraser
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Tell It to the Bees
as Jim
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1983
as Bob Fraser
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Kingdom of Heaven
as Angelic Priest
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Kingdom of Heaven
as Angelic Priest
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
T2 Trainspotting
as Stoddart
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Kingdom of Heaven
as Angelic Priest
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
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.
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Have your say
Community
Which Steven Robertson performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
Join the conversation
Reference
Continue exploring
Trending performers
Directors they work with
Collections to read next
