Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#11953
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Time Winters represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 33 years in, and Time is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Time Winters appears in 12 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Time. Sneakers is the clearest case: a film rated 6.9 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 horror, thriller, mystery. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Jeff Chan, Floria Sigismondi, Katt Shea and others, Time Winters 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.
Sneakers (1992) as Homeless Man · Defending Your Life (1991) as Porter · Plus One (2019) as Mr. Riccardi
Career snapshot
Ranked #11953 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
12
1990–2023
Career length
33 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.9
Sneakers
Average Nutevio score
6.1
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
6.9
Sneakers
Most frequent director
Jeff Chan
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Jeff Chan
Most common genre
Comedy
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 41m
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
6.5
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
6.5 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Poison Ivy, Sneakers, Doc Hollywood — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
6.5
Across 6 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
6.4
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. Poison Ivy, Sneakers, Doc Hollywood.
Most productive era
1990s
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 | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.43 films | 6.51 film | — |
| Thriller | 5.41 film | 5.12 films | 5.41 film |
| Comedy | 6.75 films | 6.81 film | — |
| Crime | 6.91 film | — | — |
| Romance | 6.63 films | 6.81 film | — |
| Horror | 6.61 film | 5.12 films | 5.42 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Forster's Technician.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
6.9 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
2023Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror
The current state of the argument, as Professor Sievers.
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.
12 of 12 films
as Homeless Man
Directed by Phil Alden Robinson
as Porter
Directed by Albert Brooks
as Forster's Technician
Directed by Joe Dante
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
Homeless Man
Sneakers (1992)
Performance score6.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Homeless Man gives Time Winters a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Porter
Defending Your Life (1991)
Performance score6.8
Defending Your Life asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Porter is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Mr. Riccardi
Plus One (2019)
Performance score6.7
Plus One asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mr. Riccardi is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Forster's Technician
Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)
Performance score6.6
Gremlins 2: The New Batch asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Forster's Technician 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 Homeless Man
Start here. Sneakers is the clearest statement of what Time Winters does — accessible, 125 minutes, and rated 6.9 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Time 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.
Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)
Keeps the comedy register of Sneakers but asks for a colder reading of it.
Defending Your Life (1991)
Keeps the comedy register of Gremlins 2: The New Batch but asks for a colder reading of it.
Plus One (2019)
Keeps the romance register of Defending Your Life but asks for a colder reading of it.
Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (2023)
A deliberate change of key after Plus One — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Joe Dante
Director
1 film together
Notably Gremlins 2: The New Batch
Albert Brooks
Director
1 film together
Notably Defending Your Life
Mick Jackson
Director
1 film together
Notably L.A. Story
Michael Caton-Jones
Director
1 film together
Notably Doc Hollywood
Phil Alden Robinson
Director
1 film together
Notably Sneakers
Katt Shea
Director
1 film together
Notably Poison Ivy
Floria Sigismondi
Director
1 film together
Notably The Runaways
Jeff Chan
Director
1 film together
Notably Plus One
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Phil Alden Robinson
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SneakersAlbert Brooks
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Defending Your LifeJeff Chan
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Plus OneJoe Dante
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Gremlins 2: The New BatchFloria Sigismondi
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The RunawaysMick Jackson
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
L.A. StoryMichael Caton-Jones
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Doc HollywoodKatt Shea
Director
1 film together · 5.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Poison IvySix 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
Sneakers
as Homeless Man
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Defending Your Life
as Porter
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Defending Your Life
as Porter
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Gremlins 2: The New Batch
as Forster's Technician
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Sneakers
as Homeless Man
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. Time Winters 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
33 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.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
6 catalogue titles in comedy, 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
Defending Your Life
as Porter
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Sneakers
as Homeless Man
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Runaways
as Wolfgang
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Velvet Buzzsaw
as Miami Party Guest
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Sneakers
as Homeless Man
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
L.A. Story
as Floss Waiter at L'Idiot
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Defending Your Life
as Porter
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Gremlins 2: The New Batch
as Forster's Technician
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: drama and fantasy
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and drama
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and drama
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: crime and drama
Zach Grenier
Built a career in the same territory: crime and mystery
Have your say
Community
Which Time Winters 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
