Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#15891
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
William H. Burns 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.
William H. Burns appears in 6 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without William. The Bourne Ultimatum is the clearest case: a film rated 7.5 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, drama. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, comedy, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Woody Allen, Allen Coulter, Paul Greengrass and others, William H. Burns 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 Bourne Ultimatum (2007) as NYPD Officer · Remember Me (2010) as Bailiff · Summer of Sam (1999) as Officer
Career snapshot
Ranked #15891 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
6
1999–2016
Career length
17 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.5
The Bourne Ultimatum
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.4
The Bourne Ultimatum
Most frequent director
Woody Allen
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Woody Allen
Most common genre
Drama
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 54m
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
6.4
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
6.8 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Café Society, Remember Me — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.8
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.8
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. Summer of Sam.
Most productive era
2000s
3 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.51 film | 7.51 film | 6.82 films |
| Action | — | 6.53 films | — |
| Thriller | 6.51 film | 6.53 films | — |
| Comedy | — | — | 6.41 film |
| Crime | 6.51 film | 6.02 films | — |
| Romance | — | — | 6.82 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1999Summer of Sam
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Officer.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
7.5 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.
Most recent film
2016Café Society
The current state of the argument, as Policeman.
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.
6 of 6 films
as NYPD Officer
Directed by Paul Greengrass
as Bailiff
Directed by Allen Coulter
as Policeman
Directed by Woody Allen
as Uniformed Cop (uncredited)
Directed by John Herzfeld
as Arresting Officer (uncredited)
Directed by John Singleton
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
NYPD Officer
The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)
Performance score7.3
The performance the rest of the career is read through. NYPD Officer gives William H. Burns a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Bailiff
Remember Me (2010)
Performance score7.0
Remember Me asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Bailiff is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Policeman
Café Society (2016)
Performance score6.5
Café Society asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Policeman is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Uniformed Cop (uncredited)
15 Minutes (2001)
Performance score6.5
15 Minutes asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Uniformed Cop (uncredited) 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 NYPD Officer
Start here. The Bourne Ultimatum is the clearest statement of what William H. Burns does — accessible, 115 minutes, and rated 7.5 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.
Shaft (2000)
Keeps the action register of The Bourne Ultimatum but asks for a colder reading of it.
15 Minutes (2001)
Keeps the action register of Shaft but asks for a colder reading of it.
Remember Me (2010)
A deliberate change of key after 15 Minutes — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Café Society (2016)
Keeps the romance register of Remember Me but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Spike Lee
Director
1 film together
Notably Summer of Sam
John Singleton
Director
1 film together
Notably Shaft
John Herzfeld
Director
1 film together
Notably 15 Minutes
Paul Greengrass
Director
1 film together
Notably The Bourne Ultimatum
Allen Coulter
Director
1 film together
Notably Remember Me
Woody Allen
Director
1 film together
Notably Café Society
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Paul Greengrass
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Bourne UltimatumAllen Coulter
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Remember MeSpike Lee
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Summer of SamWoody Allen
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Café SocietyJohn Singleton
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
ShaftJohn Herzfeld
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
15 MinutesSix 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 Bourne Ultimatum
as NYPD Officer
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Remember Me
as Bailiff
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 Bourne Ultimatum
as NYPD Officer
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Shaft
as Arresting Officer (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Bourne Ultimatum
as NYPD Officer
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 H. Burns 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
4 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 Bourne Ultimatum
as NYPD Officer
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Bourne Ultimatum
as NYPD Officer
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Remember Me
as Bailiff
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Bourne Ultimatum
as NYPD Officer
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Bourne Ultimatum
as NYPD Officer
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Shaft
as Arresting Officer (uncredited)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Café Society
as Policeman
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Bourne Ultimatum
as NYPD Officer
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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David Krumholtz
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Cillian Murphy
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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