Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#41771
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Tim Ahern represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 27 years in, and Tim is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Tim Ahern appears in 11 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Tim. Happy Meat is the clearest case: a film rated 7.0 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 comedy, horror, crime. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Aml Ameen, Rupert Goold, Bille August and others, Tim Ahern 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.
Happy Meat (2024) as Perry · Boxing Day (2021) as Dave · Judy (2019) as Walter Rickerts
Career snapshot
Ranked #41771 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
11
1997–2024
Career length
27 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.0
Happy Meat
Average Nutevio score
6.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.0
Happy Meat
Most frequent director
Aml Ameen
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Aml Ameen
Most common genre
Drama
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 37m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.9
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
6.5
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
6.6 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Kiss the Girls — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
6.6
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
6.5
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. Kiss the Girls.
Most productive era
2010s
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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.61 film | 6.31 film | 6.63 films | 6.31 film |
| Action | — | — | 5.71 film | — |
| Thriller | 6.61 film | — | 5.71 film | 6.02 films |
| Comedy | — | — | — | 6.82 films |
| Crime | 6.61 film | — | — | 5.71 film |
| Romance | — | 6.31 film | 6.41 film | 6.71 film |
| Horror | — | — | 5.71 film | 7.01 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1997Kiss the Girls
Where our catalogue meets this career, as LAPD Sergeant.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2024Happy Meat
7.0 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 Perry.
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.
11 of 11 films
as Dave
Directed by Aml Ameen
as Walter Rickerts
Directed by Rupert Goold
as LAPD Sergeant
Directed by Gary Fleder
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
Perry
Happy Meat (2024)
Performance score7.1
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Perry gives Tim Ahern a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Dave
Boxing Day (2021)
Performance score6.6
Boxing Day asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Dave is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Walter Rickerts
Judy (2019)
Performance score6.6
Judy asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Walter Rickerts is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Radio Host
55 Steps (2018)
Performance score6.6
55 Steps asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Radio Host 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 Perry
Start here. Happy Meat is the clearest statement of what Tim Ahern does — accessible, 16 minutes, and rated 7.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Tim 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.
Kiss the Girls (1997)
A deliberate change of key after Happy Meat — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
55 Steps (2018)
Keeps the drama register of Kiss the Girls but asks for a colder reading of it.
Judy (2019)
Keeps the drama register of 55 Steps but asks for a colder reading of it.
Boxing Day (2021)
A deliberate change of key after Judy — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Gary Fleder
Director
1 film together
Notably Kiss the Girls
Paul McGuigan
Director
1 film together
Notably Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool
Bille August
Director
1 film together
Notably 55 Steps
Rupert Goold
Director
1 film together
Notably Judy
Aml Ameen
Director
1 film together
Notably Boxing Day
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Aml Ameen
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Boxing DayRupert Goold
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
JudyBille August
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
55 StepsGary Fleder
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Kiss the GirlsPaul McGuigan
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Film Stars Don't Die in LiverpoolSix 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
Judy
as Walter Rickerts
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Judy
as Walter Rickerts
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Happy Meat
as Perry
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Kiss the Girls
as LAPD Sergeant
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Happy Meat
as Perry
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. Tim Ahern 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
6 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
Kiss the Girls
as LAPD Sergeant
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Kiss the Girls
as LAPD Sergeant
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Judy
as Walter Rickerts
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Kiss the Girls
as LAPD Sergeant
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Happy Meat
as Perry
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Kill Command
as Harbinger Exec.
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Judy
as Walter Rickerts
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Kiss the Girls
as LAPD Sergeant
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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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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