Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#34573
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
William 'Big Sleeps' Stewart is the performer our scores keep defending against the popular vote — a career of films that get better the further you stand from their release week.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
William 'Big Sleeps' Stewart appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without William. 50/50 is the clearest case: a film rated 7.2 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 action, comedy, crime. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Michael Dowse, Gene Stupnitsky, Kyle Newacheck and others, William 'Big Sleeps' Stewart 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.
50/50 (2011) as George · Good Boys (2019) as Delivery Man · The A-Team (2010) as Tahoe Inmate #1
Career snapshot
Ranked #34573 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
2008–2020
Career length
12 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.2
50/50
Average Nutevio score
6.3
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.2
50/50
Most frequent director
Michael Dowse
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Michael Dowse
Most common genre
Comedy
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 31m
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
6.2
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
2010s
6.5 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Good Boys, Game Over, Man!, The Show — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
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
2010s
6.3
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 Day the Earth Stood Still.
Most productive era
2010s
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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 5.91 film | 6.62 films | 6.01 film |
| Action | — | 6.33 films | 5.81 film |
| Thriller | 5.91 film | — | 6.01 film |
| Comedy | — | 6.65 films | 5.81 film |
| Crime | — | 6.61 film | 5.81 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2008The Day the Earth Stood Still
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Transit Cop.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
201150/50
7.2 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
2020Genesis Code
The current state of the argument, as Charlie Miller.
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.
9 of 9 films
as George
Directed by Jonathan Levine
as Delivery Man
Directed by Gene Stupnitsky
as Tahoe Inmate #1
Directed by Joe Carnahan
as Dee
Directed by Michael Dowse
as Charlie Miller
Directed by Unknown
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
George
50/50 (2011)
Performance score7.1
The performance the rest of the career is read through. George gives William 'Big Sleeps' Stewart a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Delivery Man
Good Boys (2019)
Performance score6.8
Good Boys asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Delivery Man is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Tahoe Inmate #1
The A-Team (2010)
Performance score6.6
The A-Team asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Tahoe Inmate #1 is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Dee
Coffee & Kareem (2020)
Performance score6.5
Coffee & Kareem asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Dee 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 George
Start here. 50/50 is the clearest statement of what William 'Big Sleeps' Stewart does — accessible, 100 minutes, and rated 7.2 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet William 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.
The A-Team (2010)
Keeps the comedy register of 50/50 but asks for a colder reading of it.
Good Boys (2019)
Keeps the comedy register of The A-Team but asks for a colder reading of it.
Coffee & Kareem (2020)
Keeps the comedy register of Good Boys but asks for a colder reading of it.
Genesis Code (2020)
The turn in the path: a film the public underrates and we do not. By this point you will know why.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Scott Derrickson
Director
1 film together
Notably The Day the Earth Stood Still
Joe Carnahan
Director
1 film together
Notably The A-Team
Jonathan Levine
Director
1 film together
Notably 50/50
Evan Goldberg
Director
1 film together
Notably The Interview
Giancarlo Esposito
Director
1 film together
Notably The Show
Kyle Newacheck
Director
1 film together
Notably Game Over, Man!
Gene Stupnitsky
Director
1 film together
Notably Good Boys
Michael Dowse
Director
1 film together
Notably Coffee & Kareem
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Jonathan Levine
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
50/50Gene Stupnitsky
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Good BoysJoe Carnahan
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 A-TeamEvan Goldberg
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The InterviewGiancarlo Esposito
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The ShowScott Derrickson
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Day the Earth Stood StillMichael Dowse
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Coffee & KareemKyle Newacheck
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Game Over, Man!Six 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
50/50
as George
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
The Show
as Curtis
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
50/50
as George
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Day the Earth Stood Still
as Transit Cop
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
50/50
as George
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. William 'Big Sleeps' Stewart 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.
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
50/50
as George
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The A-Team
as Tahoe Inmate #1
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Show
as Curtis
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Genesis Code
as Charlie Miller
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The A-Team
as Tahoe Inmate #1
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Game Over, Man!
as Rodge
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
50/50
as George
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Genesis Code
as Charlie Miller
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: drama and thriller
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Christian Bale
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Zach Grenier
Built a career in the same territory: crime and mystery
Richmond Arquette
Built a career in the same territory: crime and mystery
Have your say
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Reference
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