Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#2967
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Ben Hernandez Bray 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.
Ben Hernandez Bray appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Ben. McFarland, USA 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, screen presence. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for family, drama, action. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Niki Caro, Joe Carnahan, Oliver Stone and others, Ben Hernandez Bray 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.
McFarland, USA (2015) as Ernesto Valles · The Hurricane (1999) as Joey Giardello · Real Steel (2011) as Ricky's Henchman (uncredited)
Career snapshot
Ranked #2967 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
1999–2015
Career length
16 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.5
McFarland, USA
Average Nutevio score
6.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.5
McFarland, USA
Most frequent director
Joe Carnahan
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Joe Carnahan
Most common genre
Drama
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 58m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.0
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
1990s
7.4 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. The Hurricane — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
7.4
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
7.4
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. The Hurricane.
Most productive era
2010s
5 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 | 7.41 film | — | 7.13 films |
| Action | — | 6.01 film | 6.83 films |
| Thriller | — | 7.21 film | 6.52 films |
| Comedy | — | 6.53 films | 6.41 film |
| Crime | — | 6.62 films | 6.42 films |
| Romance | — | 6.31 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1999The Hurricane
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Joey Giardello.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2015McFarland, USA
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. The current state of the argument, as Ernesto Valles.
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 Ernesto Valles
Directed by Niki Caro
as Ricky's Henchman (uncredited)
Directed by Shawn Levy
as Joey Giardello
Directed by Norman Jewison
as Dexter Goon
Directed by Shane Black
as Dwayne Hernandez
Directed by Joe Carnahan
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
Ernesto Valles
McFarland, USA (2015)
Performance score7.3
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Ernesto Valles gives Ben Hernandez Bray a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Ricky's Henchman (uncredited)
Real Steel (2011)
Performance score7.2
Real Steel asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Ricky's Henchman (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Joey Giardello
The Hurricane (1999)
Performance score7.2
The Hurricane asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Joey Giardello is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Dexter Goon
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)
Performance score7.1
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Dexter Goon 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 Ernesto Valles
Start here. McFarland, USA is the clearest statement of what Ben Hernandez Bray does — accessible, 128 minutes, and rated 7.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Ben 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 Hurricane (1999)
Keeps the drama register of McFarland, USA but asks for a colder reading of it.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)
A deliberate change of key after The Hurricane — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Real Steel (2011)
A deliberate change of key after Kiss Kiss Bang Bang — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Grey (2012)
Keeps the action register of Real Steel but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Joe Carnahan
Director
2 films together
Notably The Grey
Norman Jewison
Director
1 film together
Notably The Hurricane
Dennis Dugan
Director
1 film together
Notably National Security
David O. Russell
Director
1 film together
Notably I ♥ Huckabees
Shane Black
Director
1 film together
Notably Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Shawn Levy
Director
1 film together
Notably Real Steel
Oliver Stone
Director
1 film together
Notably Savages
Niki Caro
Director
1 film together
Notably McFarland, USA
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Joe Carnahan
Director
2 films together · 6.5 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The GreyNiki Caro
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
McFarland, USANorman Jewison
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The HurricaneShawn Levy
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Real SteelShane Black
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Kiss Kiss Bang BangOliver Stone
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SavagesDavid O. Russell
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
I ♥ HuckabeesDennis Dugan
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
National SecuritySix 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
McFarland, USA
as Ernesto Valles
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
McFarland, USA
as Ernesto Valles
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 Hurricane
as Joey Giardello
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Hurricane
as Joey Giardello
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
McFarland, USA
as Ernesto Valles
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. Ben Hernandez Bray 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
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
as Dexter Goon
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
as Dexter Goon
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
McFarland, USA
as Ernesto Valles
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
as Dexter Goon
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Real Steel
as Ricky's Henchman (uncredited)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Grey
as Dwayne Hernandez
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Savages
as Cartel Heist Passenger
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Real Steel
as Ricky's Henchman (uncredited)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Christian Bale
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David Krumholtz
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Tom Hanks
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Reference
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