Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#15257
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Charlie Hartsock 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.
Charlie Hartsock appears in 6 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Charlie. Crazy, Stupid, Love. is the clearest case: a film rated 7.4 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, quiet performance, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for comedy, romance, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Don Scardino, Glenn Ficarra, Greg Mottola and others, Charlie Hartsock 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.
Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011) as Sad Sack · Superbad (2007) as Good Shopper Cashier · The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005) as Speed Dating MC
Career snapshot
Ranked #15257 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
6
1998–2013
Career length
15 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.4
Crazy, Stupid, Love.
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
Crazy, Stupid, Love.
Most frequent director
Don Scardino
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Don Scardino
Most common genre
Comedy
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 51m
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
6.4
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. The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, Crazy, Stupid, Love. — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.7
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.5
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. Deep Impact.
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 | 6.41 film | — | — |
| Comedy | — | 6.63 films | 6.72 films |
| Romance | — | 6.61 film | 7.41 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1998Deep Impact
Where our catalogue meets this career, as David Baker.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2007Superbad
7.4 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
2013The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
The current state of the argument, as Onlooker.
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.
6 of 6 films
as Sad Sack
Directed by Glenn Ficarra
as Good Shopper Cashier
Directed by Greg Mottola
as Speed Dating MC
Directed by Judd Apatow
as Fish 'n' Chips Patron
Directed by Tom Shadyac
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
Sad Sack
Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Sad Sack gives Charlie Hartsock a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Good Shopper Cashier
Superbad (2007)
Performance score7.2
Superbad asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Good Shopper Cashier is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Speed Dating MC
The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005)
Performance score6.6
The 40 Year Old Virgin asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Speed Dating MC is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Onlooker
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2013)
Performance score6.5
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Onlooker 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 Sad Sack
Start here. Crazy, Stupid, Love. is the clearest statement of what Charlie Hartsock does — accessible, 118 minutes, and rated 7.4 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 40 Year Old Virgin (2005)
Keeps the romance register of Crazy, Stupid, Love. but asks for a colder reading of it.
Superbad (2007)
Keeps the comedy register of The 40 Year Old Virgin but asks for a colder reading of it.
Evan Almighty (2007)
Keeps the comedy register of Superbad but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2013)
Keeps the comedy register of Evan Almighty but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Mimi Leder
Director
1 film together
Notably Deep Impact
Judd Apatow
Director
1 film together
Notably The 40 Year Old Virgin
Tom Shadyac
Director
1 film together
Notably Evan Almighty
Greg Mottola
Director
1 film together
Notably Superbad
Glenn Ficarra
Director
1 film together
Notably Crazy, Stupid, Love.
Don Scardino
Director
1 film together
Notably The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Glenn Ficarra
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Crazy, Stupid, Love.Greg Mottola
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SuperbadJudd Apatow
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 40 Year Old VirginMimi Leder
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Deep ImpactDon Scardino
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Incredible Burt WonderstoneTom Shadyac
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Evan AlmightySix 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
Crazy, Stupid, Love.
as Sad Sack
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Crazy, Stupid, Love.
as Sad Sack
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Superbad
as Good Shopper Cashier
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Evan Almighty
as Fish 'n' Chips Patron
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Crazy, Stupid, Love.
as Sad Sack
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 Hartsock 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.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
5 catalogue titles in comedy, 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
Superbad
as Good Shopper Cashier
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Superbad
as Good Shopper Cashier
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Crazy, Stupid, Love.
as Sad Sack
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Evan Almighty
as Fish 'n' Chips Patron
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Crazy, Stupid, Love.
as Sad Sack
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Deep Impact
as David Baker
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Crazy, Stupid, Love.
as Sad Sack
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
as Onlooker
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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