Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#11739
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Christian Clavier represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 49 years in, and Christian is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Christian Clavier appears in 26 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Christian. Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra 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, fantasy, adventure. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Pierre-François Martin-Laval, Alexandre Astier, Ludovic Bernard and others, Christian Clavier 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.
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra (2002) as Astérix · The Visitors (1993) as Jacquouille la Fripouille / Jacques-Henri Jacquard · French Fried Vacation 2 (1979) as Jérôme Tarayre
Career snapshot
Ranked #11739 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
26
1978–2027
Career length
49 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.4
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
Average Nutevio score
4.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.4
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
Most frequent director
Jean-Marie Poiré
5 films together
Longest collaboration
5×
With Jean-Marie Poiré
Most common genre
Comedy
26 titles
Average runtime
1h 23m
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
6.5
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
1970s
6.8 average MV
The 1970s are where the work and the material meet. French Fried Vacation 2, French Fried Vacation — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1970s
6.8
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1970s
7.0
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1970s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. French Fried Vacation 2, French Fried Vacation.
Most productive era
2020s
13 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 | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Comedy | 6.82 films | 6.71 film | 6.52 films | 6.03 films | 5.05 films | 3.913 films |
| Crime | — | — | — | — | — | 5.01 film |
| Romance | — | — | — | — | — | 6.31 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Jérôme Tarayre.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2002Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
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
The current state of the argument, as Cutiro / Tirocu.
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.
26 of 26 films
as Astérix
Directed by Alain Chabat
as Astérix (voice)
Directed by Alexandre Astier
as Jacquouille la Fripouille / Jacques-Henri Jacquard
Directed by Jean-Marie Poiré
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
Astérix
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra (2002)
Performance score7.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Astérix gives Christian Clavier a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Astérix (voice)
Asterix: The Secret of the Magic Potion (2018)
Performance score7.5
Asterix: The Secret of the Magic Potion asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Astérix (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Jacquouille la Fripouille / Jacques-Henri Jacquard
The Visitors (1993)
Performance score7.5
The Visitors asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Jacquouille la Fripouille / Jacques-Henri Jacquard is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Jérôme Tarayre
French Fried Vacation 2 (1979)
Performance score7.5
French Fried Vacation 2 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Jérôme Tarayre 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 Astérix
Start here. Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra is the clearest statement of what Christian Clavier does — accessible, 108 minutes, and rated 7.4 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Christian 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.
French Fried Vacation 2 (1979)
Keeps the comedy register of Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra but asks for a colder reading of it.
Gramps Is in the Resistance (1983)
Keeps the comedy register of French Fried Vacation 2 but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Visitors (1993)
Same director as Gramps Is in the Resistance, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Asterix: The Secret of the Magic Potion (2018)
Keeps the comedy register of The Visitors but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Jean-Marie Poiré
Director
5 films together
Notably The Visitors
Alexandre Astier
Director
4 films together
Notably Asterix: The Secret of the Magic Potion
Patrice Leconte
Director
2 films together
Notably French Fried Vacation 2
Alain Chabat
Director
1 film together
Notably Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
Olivier Baroux
Director
1 film together
Notably Christmas with the Tuches
Jérôme Commandeur
Director
1 film together
Notably Employee of the Month
Ludovic Bernard
Director
1 film together
Notably Avis de tempête
Pierre-François Martin-Laval
Director
1 film together
Notably Serial Teachers 3
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Jean-Marie Poiré
Director
5 films together · 5.8 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 5 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The VisitorsAlexandre Astier
Director
4 films together · 4.9 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 4 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Asterix: The Secret of the Magic PotionPatrice Leconte
Director
2 films together · 6.8 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
French Fried Vacation 2Alain Chabat
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Asterix & Obelix: Mission CleopatraJérôme Commandeur
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Employee of the MonthOlivier Baroux
Director
1 film together · 5.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Christmas with the TuchesPierre-François Martin-Laval
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Serial Teachers 3Ludovic Bernard
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Avis de tempêteSix 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
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
as Astérix
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
as Astérix
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
as Astérix
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Christmas with the Tuches
as Le Père Noël
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
as Astérix
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. Christian Clavier 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
49 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.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
26 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
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
as Astérix
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
as Astérix
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
as Astérix
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
as Astérix
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
as Astérix
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Asterix: The Secret of the Magic Potion
as Astérix (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Kaamelott: The Second Chapter (Part I)
as Le Jurisconsulte
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Asterix: The Secret of the Magic Potion
as Astérix (voice)
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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