Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#4181
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Timothy Dalton represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 54 years in, and Timothy is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Timothy Dalton appears in 15 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Timothy. Whoopi Goldberg: The Winning Act is the clearest case: a film rated 8.5 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, screen presence. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for documentary, comedy, adventure. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Josh Cooley, Steve Purcell, Lee Unkrich and others, Timothy Dalton 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.
Whoopi Goldberg: The Winning Act (2022) as Self (archive footage) · Toy Story 3 (2010) as Mr. Pricklepants (voice) · Toy Story 4 (2019) as Mr. Pricklepants (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #4181 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
15
1968–2022
Career length
54 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.5
Whoopi Goldberg: The Winning Act
Average Nutevio score
7.0
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.5
Whoopi Goldberg: The Winning Act
Most frequent director
John Glen
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With John Glen
Most common genre
Comedy
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 26m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.2
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
7.2
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
2020s
8.5 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Whoopi Goldberg: The Winning Act — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
8.5
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
8.5
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1960s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Lion in Winter.
Most productive era
2010s
7 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 | 1960s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.01 film | — | — | — | — | — |
| Action | — | 6.52 films | — | 6.82 films | 6.21 film | — |
| Thriller | — | 6.52 films | — | — | 6.21 film | — |
| Comedy | — | — | — | 7.12 films | 7.45 films | — |
| Crime | — | — | — | 7.71 film | — | — |
| Romance | — | — | — | — | 6.21 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Philip II.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2022Whoopi Goldberg: The Winning Act
8.5 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. The current state of the argument, as Self (archive footage).
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.
15 of 15 films
as Mr. Pricklepants (voice)
Directed by Lee Unkrich
as Lord Milori (voice)
Directed by Unknown
as Mr. Pricklepants (voice)
Directed by Josh Cooley
as Simon Skinner
Directed by Edgar Wright
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
Self (archive footage)
Whoopi Goldberg: The Winning Act (2022)
Performance score8.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Self (archive footage) gives Timothy Dalton a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Mr. Pricklepants (voice)
Toy Story 3 (2010)
Performance score7.8
Toy Story 3 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mr. Pricklepants (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Lord Milori (voice)
Secret of the Wings (2012)
Performance score7.6
Secret of the Wings asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Lord Milori (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Mr. Pricklepants (voice)
Toy Story 4 (2019)
Performance score7.5
Toy Story 4 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mr. Pricklepants (voice) 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 Self (archive footage)
Start here. Whoopi Goldberg: The Winning Act is the clearest statement of what Timothy Dalton does — accessible, 48 minutes, and rated 8.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Timothy 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.
Hot Fuzz (2007)
A deliberate change of key after Whoopi Goldberg: The Winning Act — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Toy Story 3 (2010)
Keeps the comedy register of Hot Fuzz but asks for a colder reading of it.
Secret of the Wings (2012)
Keeps the family register of Toy Story 3 but asks for a colder reading of it.
Toy Story 4 (2019)
Keeps the adventure register of Secret of the Wings but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
John Glen
Director
2 films together
Notably The Living Daylights
Anthony Harvey
Director
1 film together
Notably The Lion in Winter
Joe Johnston
Director
1 film together
Notably The Rocketeer
Les Mayfield
Director
1 film together
Notably American Outlaws
Joe Dante
Director
1 film together
Notably Looney Tunes: Back in Action
Edgar Wright
Director
1 film together
Notably Hot Fuzz
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Director
1 film together
Notably The Tourist
Lee Unkrich
Director
1 film together
Notably Toy Story 3
Steve Purcell
Director
1 film together
Notably Toy Story That Time Forgot
Josh Cooley
Director
1 film together
Notably Toy Story 4
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
John Glen
Director
2 films together · 6.5 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The Living DaylightsLee Unkrich
Director
1 film together · 8.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Toy Story 3Josh Cooley
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Toy Story 4Edgar Wright
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hot FuzzSteve Purcell
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Toy Story That Time ForgotAnthony Harvey
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Lion in WinterJoe Johnston
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 RocketeerJoe Dante
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Looney Tunes: Back in ActionFlorian 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 TouristLes Mayfield
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
American OutlawsSix 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
Toy Story 3
as Mr. Pricklepants (voice)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Secret of the Wings
as Lord Milori (voice)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Whoopi Goldberg: The Winning Act
as Self (archive footage)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Toy Story 4
as Mr. Pricklepants (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Whoopi Goldberg: The Winning Act
as Self (archive footage)
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. Timothy Dalton 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
54 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
7 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
Whoopi Goldberg: The Winning Act
as Self (archive footage)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Hot Fuzz
as Simon Skinner
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Secret of the Wings
as Lord Milori (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Secret of the Wings
as Lord Milori (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Hot Fuzz
as Simon Skinner
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
American Outlaws
as Allan Pinkerton
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Secret of the Wings
as Lord Milori (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Toy Story 3
as Mr. Pricklepants (voice)
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: adventure and drama
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Michael Caine
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
Have your say
Community
Which Timothy Dalton 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
