Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#9440
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Tom Sturridge 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.
Tom Sturridge appears in 15 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Tom. The Boat That Rocked is the clearest case: a film rated 7.1 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, quiet performance, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, drama, science fiction. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Olivier Assayas, Kristen Stewart, Thomas Napper and others, Tom Sturridge 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.
The Boat That Rocked (2009) as Carl · Mary Shelley (2017) as Lord Byron · Far from the Madding Crowd (2015) as Sergeant Francis Troy
Career snapshot
Ranked #9440 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
15
2004–2027
Career length
23 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.1
The Boat That Rocked
Average Nutevio score
5.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.2
The Boat That Rocked
Most frequent director
Olivier Assayas
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Olivier Assayas
Most common genre
Drama
14 titles
Average runtime
1h 46m
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
6.3
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
6.5 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. The Boat That Rocked, Vanity Fair — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.5
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.5
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. The Boat That Rocked, Vanity Fair.
Most productive era
2010s
9 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 | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.52 films | 6.38 films | 4.94 films |
| Action | — | 6.41 film | — |
| Thriller | — | 5.71 film | — |
| Comedy | 7.11 film | — | — |
| Romance | 6.01 film | 6.53 films | 0.01 film |
| Horror | — | 5.71 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2004Vanity Fair
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Older Georgy Osborne.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
7.1 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
2027The Man I Love
The current state of the argument, as Dennis.
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 Lord Byron
Directed by Haifaa al-Mansour
as Sergeant Francis Troy
Directed by Thomas Vinterberg
as François Clicquot
Directed by Thomas Napper
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
Carl
The Boat That Rocked (2009)
Performance score7.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Carl gives Tom Sturridge a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Lord Byron
Mary Shelley (2017)
Performance score7.1
Mary Shelley asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Lord Byron is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Sergeant Francis Troy
Far from the Madding Crowd (2015)
Performance score7.1
Far from the Madding Crowd asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Sergeant Francis Troy is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
François Clicquot
Widow Clicquot (2024)
Performance score7.0
Widow Clicquot asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. François Clicquot 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 Carl
Start here. The Boat That Rocked is the clearest statement of what Tom Sturridge does — accessible, 135 minutes, and rated 7.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Tom 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.
Far from the Madding Crowd (2015)
Keeps the drama register of The Boat That Rocked but asks for a colder reading of it.
Mary Shelley (2017)
Keeps the romance register of Far from the Madding Crowd but asks for a colder reading of it.
Skin (2019)
Keeps the drama register of Mary Shelley but asks for a colder reading of it.
Widow Clicquot (2024)
Keeps the drama register of Skin but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Mira Nair
Director
1 film together
Notably Vanity Fair
Richard Curtis
Director
1 film together
Notably The Boat That Rocked
Walter Salles
Director
1 film together
Notably On the Road
Richard Laxton
Director
1 film together
Notably Effie Gray
Thomas Vinterberg
Director
1 film together
Notably Far from the Madding Crowd
Haifaa al-Mansour
Director
1 film together
Notably Mary Shelley
Saul Dibb
Director
1 film together
Notably Journey's End
Terrence Malick
Director
1 film together
Notably Song to Song
Dakota Fanning
Director
1 film together
Notably Hello Apartment
Thomas Napper
Director
1 film together
Notably Widow Clicquot
Kristen Stewart
Director
1 film together
Notably The Chronology of Water
Olivier Assayas
Director
1 film together
Notably The Wizard of the Kremlin
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Richard Curtis
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Boat That RockedHaifaa al-Mansour
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mary ShelleyThomas Vinterberg
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Far from the Madding CrowdKristen Stewart
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Chronology of WaterOlivier Assayas
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 Wizard of the KremlinThomas Napper
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Widow ClicquotSaul Dibb
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Journey's EndRichard Laxton
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Effie GrayMira Nair
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Vanity FairDakota Fanning
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hello ApartmentWalter Salles
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
On the RoadTerrence Malick
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Song to SongSix 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
The Boat That Rocked
as Carl
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Mary Shelley
as Lord Byron
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
The Boat That Rocked
as Carl
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Vanity Fair
as Older Georgy Osborne
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Boat That Rocked
as Carl
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. Tom Sturridge 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
23 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
14 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
The Boat That Rocked
as Carl
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Velvet Buzzsaw
as Jon Dondon
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Song to Song
as BV's Brother
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Velvet Buzzsaw
as Jon Dondon
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Boat That Rocked
as Carl
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
On the Road
as Carlo Marx / Allen Ginsberg
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Mary Shelley
as Lord Byron
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Hello Apartment
as Adam
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
Community
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Reference
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