Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#1190
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Wagner Moura represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 27 years in, and Wagner is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Wagner Moura appears in 15 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Wagner. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is the clearest case: a film rated 8.3 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 crime, science fiction, horror. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Bradley Cooper, Louis Leterrier, Alex Garland and others, Wagner Moura 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.
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022) as Wolf (voice) · Elite Squad (2007) as Capitão Nascimento · Marighella (2021) as (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #1190 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
15
2000–2027
Career length
27 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.3
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.2
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
Most frequent director
José Padilha
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With José Padilha
Most common genre
Drama
10 titles
Average runtime
1h 42m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.9
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
2010s
7.0 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Elysium, Elite Squad: The Enemy Within — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.0
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
7.2
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. Elite Squad, Woman on Top.
Most productive era
2020s
11 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 | 7.02 films | 7.02 films | 6.96 films |
| Action | 7.91 film | 7.02 films | 7.13 films |
| Thriller | — | 6.51 film | 6.64 films |
| Comedy | 6.11 film | — | 8.31 film |
| Crime | 7.91 film | 7.61 film | 3.62 films |
| Romance | 6.11 film | — | — |
| Horror | — | — | 6.21 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2000Woman on Top
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Rafi.
Career peak
2007Elite Squad
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
2022Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
8.3 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
The current state of the argument.
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 Capitão Nascimento
Directed by José Padilha
as Wolf (voice)
Directed by Joel Crawford
as Tenente-Coronel Nascimento
Directed by José Padilha
as Marcelo Alves / Armando Solimões / Fernando Solimões
Directed by Unknown
as José Sebastião (voice)
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.
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The defining work
#1
Capitão Nascimento
Elite Squad (2007)
Performance score8.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Capitão Nascimento gives Wagner Moura a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Wolf (voice)
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022)
Performance score8.3
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Wolf (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Tenente-Coronel Nascimento
Elite Squad: The Enemy Within (2010)
Performance score8.1
Elite Squad: The Enemy Within asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Tenente-Coronel Nascimento is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Marcelo Alves / Armando Solimões / Fernando Solimões
The Secret Agent (2025)
Performance score7.8
The Secret Agent asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Marcelo Alves / Armando Solimões / Fernando Solimões 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 Capitão Nascimento
Start here. Elite Squad is the clearest statement of what Wagner Moura does — accessible, 115 minutes, and rated 7.9 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Wagner 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.
Elite Squad: The Enemy Within (2010)
Same director as Elite Squad, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
My Uncle José (2021)
Keeps the drama register of Elite Squad: The Enemy Within but asks for a colder reading of it.
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022)
Keeps the animation register of My Uncle José but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Secret Agent (2025)
A deliberate change of key after Puss in Boots: The Last Wish — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
José Padilha
Director
2 films together
Notably Elite Squad
Tomm Moore
Director
1 film together
Notably There's a Monster in My Kitchen
Olivier Assayas
Director
1 film together
Notably Wasp Network
Wagner Moura
Director
1 film together
Notably Marighella
Anthony Russo
Director
1 film together
Notably The Gray Man
Joel Crawford
Director
1 film together
Notably Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
Alex Garland
Director
1 film together
Notably Civil War
Louis Leterrier
Director
1 film together
Notably The Last House
Bradley Cooper
Director
1 film together
Notably Untitled Ocean's Prequel
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
José Padilha
Director
2 films together · 7.8 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Elite SquadJoel Crawford
Director
1 film together · 8.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Puss in Boots: The Last WishWagner Moura
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
MarighellaAlex Garland
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Civil WarAnthony Russo
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Gray ManLouis Leterrier
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 Last HouseTomm Moore
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
There's a Monster in My KitchenOlivier Assayas
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Wasp NetworkBradley Cooper
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
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
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
as Wolf (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
My Uncle José
as José Sebastião (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
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
as Wolf (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Marighella
as (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Elite Squad
as Capitão Nascimento
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. Wagner Moura 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
27 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
10 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
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
as Wolf (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Elite Squad
as Capitão Nascimento
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
My Uncle José
as José Sebastião (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
as Wolf (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Elite Squad
as Capitão Nascimento
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Elite Squad
as Capitão Nascimento
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Woman on Top
as Rafi
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
as Wolf (voice)
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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