Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3392
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Billy Brown represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 26 years in, and Billy is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Billy Brown appears in 8 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Billy. Star Trek is the clearest case: a film rated 7.6 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, action. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for drama, action, crime. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Babak Najafi, Sam Liu, J.J. Abrams and others, Billy Brown 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.
Star Trek (2009) as Med Evac Pilot · Working Man (2019) as Walter Brewer · Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay (2018) as Bronze Tiger (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #3392 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
8
1993–2019
Career length
26 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.6
Star Trek
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.4
Star Trek
Most frequent director
Babak Najafi
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Babak Najafi
Most common genre
Action
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 45m
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
6.6
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
6.7 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Working Man, Proud Mary, Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.7
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.6
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 Lost World: Jurassic Park, Geronimo: An American Legend.
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 | 6.41 film | — | 7.41 film |
| Action | 6.52 films | 6.72 films | 6.32 films |
| Thriller | — | 5.81 film | 5.51 film |
| Comedy | — | 6.51 film | — |
| Crime | — | — | 5.51 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1993Geronimo: An American Legend
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Native American.
Highest rated performance
2009Star Trek
7.6 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak · Most recent film
2019Working Man
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once. The current state of the argument, as Walter Brewer.
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.
8 of 8 films
as Bronze Tiger (voice)
Directed by Sam Liu
as Med Evac Pilot
Directed by J.J. Abrams
as InGen Worker
Directed by Steven Spielberg
as Tom
Directed by Babak Najafi
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
Walter Brewer
Working Man (2019)
Performance score7.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Walter Brewer gives Billy Brown a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Bronze Tiger (voice)
Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay (2018)
Performance score7.5
Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Bronze Tiger (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Med Evac Pilot
Star Trek (2009)
Performance score7.4
Star Trek asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Med Evac Pilot is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
InGen Worker
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
Performance score6.6
The Lost World: Jurassic Park asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. InGen Worker 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 Walter Brewer
Start here. Working Man is the clearest statement of what Billy Brown does — accessible, 109 minutes, and rated 7.4 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Billy 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 Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
A deliberate change of key after Working Man — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Star Trek (2009)
Keeps the action register of The Lost World: Jurassic Park but asks for a colder reading of it.
Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay (2018)
Keeps the action register of Star Trek but asks for a colder reading of it.
Proud Mary (2018)
Keeps the action register of Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Walter Hill
Director
1 film together
Notably Geronimo: An American Legend
Steven Spielberg
Director
1 film together
Notably The Lost World: Jurassic Park
Jeff McGrath
Director
1 film together
Notably The Wild Thornberrys Movie
Andy Fickman
Director
1 film together
Notably Race to Witch Mountain
J.J. Abrams
Director
1 film together
Notably Star Trek
Sam Liu
Director
1 film together
Notably Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay
Babak Najafi
Director
1 film together
Notably Proud Mary
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
J.J. Abrams
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Star TrekSam Liu
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Suicide Squad: Hell to PaySteven Spielberg
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 Lost World: Jurassic ParkJeff McGrath
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Wild Thornberrys MovieWalter Hill
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Geronimo: An American LegendAndy Fickman
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Race to Witch MountainBabak Najafi
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Proud MarySix 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
Star Trek
as Med Evac Pilot
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Working Man
as Walter Brewer
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Star Trek
as Med Evac Pilot
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Geronimo: An American Legend
as Native American
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Working Man
as Walter Brewer
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. Billy Brown 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
26 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.
Action Legend
Awarded
6 catalogue titles in action, 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
Star Trek
as Med Evac Pilot
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Star Trek
as Med Evac Pilot
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Working Man
as Walter Brewer
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Proud Mary
as Tom
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Star Trek
as Med Evac Pilot
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Star Trek
as Med Evac Pilot
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Geronimo: An American Legend
as Native American
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Star Trek
as Med Evac Pilot
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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