Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#2468
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Adrian Holmes 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.
Adrian Holmes appears in 12 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Adrian. The Christmas Doctor is the clearest case: a film rated 6.9 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 science fiction, drama, thriller. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Kevin Fair, Drew Goddard, Catherine Hardwicke and others, Adrian Holmes 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 Christmas Doctor (2020) as Luke · The Cabin in the Woods (2012) as Demo Guy · Damage (2009) as Sharp
Career snapshot
Ranked #2468 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
12
2005–2022
Career length
17 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.9
The Christmas Doctor
Average Nutevio score
5.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
6.9
The Christmas Doctor
Most frequent director
Kevin Fair
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Kevin Fair
Most common genre
Thriller
9 titles
Average runtime
1h 39m
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
2000s
6.1 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Damage, White Noise 2: The Light, The Hard Corps — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.1
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.1
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. Damage, White Noise 2: The Light, The Hard Corps.
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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.61 film | 6.32 films | 5.52 films |
| Action | 6.32 films | 5.94 films | — |
| Thriller | 6.13 films | 6.05 films | 4.01 film |
| Comedy | — | 6.71 film | — |
| Romance | — | 6.01 film | 6.91 film |
| Horror | 5.61 film | 6.03 films | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2005The Hard Corps
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Cujo.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
6.9 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
2022Zero Contact
The current state of the argument, as Phil.
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.
12 of 12 films
as Demo Guy
Directed by Drew Goddard
as Sharp
Directed by Jeff F. King
as Phil
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
Luke
The Christmas Doctor (2020)
Performance score7.3
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Luke gives Adrian Holmes a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Demo Guy
The Cabin in the Woods (2012)
Performance score6.6
The Cabin in the Woods asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Demo Guy is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Sharp
Damage (2009)
Performance score6.6
Damage asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Sharp is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Phil
Zero Contact (2022)
Performance score6.5
Zero Contact asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Phil 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 Luke
Start here. The Christmas Doctor is the clearest statement of what Adrian Holmes does — accessible, 90 minutes, and rated 6.9 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Adrian 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.
Damage (2009)
Keeps the drama register of The Christmas Doctor but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Cabin in the Woods (2012)
A deliberate change of key after Damage — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Enhanced (2019)
A deliberate change of key after The Cabin in the Woods — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Zero Contact (2022)
Same director as Enhanced, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Sheldon Lettich
Director
1 film together
Notably The Hard Corps
Patrick Lussier
Director
1 film together
Notably White Noise 2: The Light
Jeff F. King
Director
1 film together
Notably Damage
Catherine Hardwicke
Director
1 film together
Notably Red Riding Hood
Drew Goddard
Director
1 film together
Notably The Cabin in the Woods
Kevin Fair
Director
1 film together
Notably The Christmas Doctor
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Kevin Fair
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 Christmas DoctorDrew Goddard
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Cabin in the WoodsJeff F. King
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
DamageSheldon Lettich
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Hard CorpsCatherine Hardwicke
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Red Riding HoodPatrick Lussier
Director
1 film together · 5.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
White Noise 2: The LightSix 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 Christmas Doctor
as Luke
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Red Riding Hood
as Captain
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 Christmas Doctor
as Luke
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Cabin in the Woods
as Demo Guy
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Christmas Doctor
as Luke
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. Adrian Holmes 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.
Thriller Legend
Awarded
9 catalogue titles in thriller, 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 Cabin in the Woods
as Demo Guy
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Cabin in the Woods
as Demo Guy
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Red Riding Hood
as Captain
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Wrecked
as Man in the Woods
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Skyscraper
as Ajani Okeke
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Skyscraper
as Ajani Okeke
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Red Riding Hood
as Captain
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Wrecked
as Man in the Woods
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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