Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#4856
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Charlie Chaplin represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 107 years in, and Charlie is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Charlie Chaplin appears in 18 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Charlie. Modern Times is the clearest case: a film rated 8.2 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 documentary, music, war. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Colin Hanks, Kevin Macdonald, Charlie Chaplin and others, Charlie Chaplin 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.
Modern Times (1936) as The Tramp (A Factory Worker) · The Great Dictator (1940) as Adenoid Hynkel, Dictator of Tomania / A Jewish Barber · Hollywood's Second World War (2019) as Adenoid Hynkel (archive footage)
Career snapshot
Ranked #4856 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
18
1921–2028
Career length
107 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.2
Modern Times
Average Nutevio score
6.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.3
The Great Dictator
Most frequent director
Charlie Chaplin
8 films together
Longest collaboration
8×
With Charlie Chaplin
Most common genre
Documentary
10 titles
Average runtime
1h 30m
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
7.1
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
1930s
8.1 average MV
The 1930s are where the work and the material meet. Modern Times, City Lights — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1930s
8.1
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1930s
8.3
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1920s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Circus, The Gold Rush, The Kid.
Most productive era
2020s
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 | 1920s | 1930s | 1940s | 1950s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.73 films | 8.12 films | 7.21 film | 7.41 film | — | — |
| Comedy | 7.73 films | 8.12 films | 7.72 films | 7.41 film | — | — |
| Crime | — | — | 7.21 film | — | — | — |
| Romance | 7.51 film | 8.12 films | — | 7.41 film | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1921The Kid
Where our catalogue meets this career, as A Tramp.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1936Modern Times
8.2 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
2028Charmed Lives: A Family Romance
The current state of the argument, as Self (archive footage).
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.
18 of 18 films
as The Tramp (A Factory Worker)
Directed by Charlie Chaplin
as Adenoid Hynkel, Dictator of Tomania / A Jewish Barber
Directed by Charlie Chaplin
as A Tramp
Directed by Charlie Chaplin
as A Tramp
Directed by Charlie Chaplin
as The Lone Prospector
Directed by Charlie Chaplin
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
The Tramp (A Factory Worker)
Modern Times (1936)
Performance score8.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. The Tramp (A Factory Worker) gives Charlie Chaplin a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Adenoid Hynkel, Dictator of Tomania / A Jewish Barber
The Great Dictator (1940)
Performance score8.6
The Great Dictator asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Adenoid Hynkel, Dictator of Tomania / A Jewish Barber is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
A Tramp
City Lights (1931)
Performance score8.5
City Lights asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. A Tramp is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
A Tramp
The Kid (1921)
Performance score8.4
The Kid asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. A Tramp 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 The Tramp (A Factory Worker)
Start here. Modern Times is the clearest statement of what Charlie Chaplin does — accessible, 87 minutes, and rated 8.2 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Charlie 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 Kid (1921)
Same director as Modern Times, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
The Gold Rush (1925)
Same director as The Kid, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
City Lights (1931)
Same director as The Gold Rush, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
The Great Dictator (1940)
Same director as City Lights, 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.
Charlie Chaplin
Director
8 films together
Notably Modern Times
Kevin Macdonald
Director
2 films together
Notably One to One: John & Yoko
Fritz Hippler
Director
1 film together
Notably The Eternal Jew
Colin Hanks
Director
1 film together
Notably John Candy: I Like Me
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Charlie Chaplin
Director
8 films together · 7.8 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 8 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Modern TimesKevin Macdonald
Director
2 films together · 6.7 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
One to One: John & YokoColin Hanks
Director
1 film together · 7.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
John Candy: I Like MeFritz Hippler
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Eternal JewSix 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 Great Dictator
as Adenoid Hynkel, Dictator of Tomania / A Jewish Barber
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Modern Times
as The Tramp (A Factory Worker)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Modern Times
as The Tramp (A Factory Worker)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
John Candy: I Like Me
as Self - Actor (archive footage)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Modern Times
as The Tramp (A Factory Worker)
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. Charlie Chaplin 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
107 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.
Documentary Legend
Awarded
10 catalogue titles in documentary, 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
Modern Times
as The Tramp (A Factory Worker)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Modern Times
as The Tramp (A Factory Worker)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Limelight
as Calvero
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Monsieur Verdoux
as Henri Verdoux
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Modern Times
as The Tramp (A Factory Worker)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Gold Rush
as The Lone Prospector
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Limelight
as Calvero
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Eternal Jew
as Self (1931) (archive footage)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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