Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3144
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Dallas Roberts 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.
Dallas Roberts appears in 13 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Dallas. Dallas Buyers Club is the clearest case: a film rated 8.0 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 horror, drama, thriller. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Joe Lo Truglio, Rian Johnson, Edward Norton and others, Dallas Roberts 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.
Dallas Buyers Club (2013) as David Wayne · Walk the Line (2005) as Sam Phillips · 3:10 to Yuma (2007) as Grayson Butterfield
Career snapshot
Ranked #3144 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
13
2004–2023
Career length
19 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.0
Dallas Buyers Club
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.9
Dallas Buyers Club
Most frequent director
James Mangold
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With James Mangold
Most common genre
Drama
9 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
6.9
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
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
6.9 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Motherless Brooklyn, Mayhem, Dallas Buyers Club — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.9
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.9
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2000s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Tell-Tale, Shrink, 3:10 to Yuma.
Most productive era
2000s
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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.36 films | 7.32 films | 4.61 film |
| Action | — | 6.52 films | — |
| Thriller | 5.42 films | 6.72 films | 4.61 film |
| Comedy | 6.21 film | 6.51 film | 7.01 film |
| Crime | — | — | 7.01 film |
| Romance | 7.02 films | — | — |
| Horror | 5.42 films | 6.51 film | 4.61 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2004A Home at the End of the World
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Jonathan Glover (1982).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
8.0 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
2023Outpost
The current state of the argument, as Ranger Dan.
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.
13 of 13 films
as David Wayne
Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée
as Sam Phillips
Directed by James Mangold
as Grayson Butterfield
Directed by James Mangold
as Devon Debella
Directed by Rian Johnson
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
David Wayne
Dallas Buyers Club (2013)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. David Wayne gives Dallas Roberts a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Sam Phillips
Walk the Line (2005)
Performance score7.6
Walk the Line asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Sam Phillips is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Grayson Butterfield
3:10 to Yuma (2007)
Performance score7.3
3:10 to Yuma asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Grayson Butterfield is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Gus
Flicka (2006)
Performance score7.1
Flicka asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Gus 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 David Wayne
Start here. Dallas Buyers Club is the clearest statement of what Dallas Roberts does — accessible, 117 minutes, and rated 8.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Dallas 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.
Walk the Line (2005)
Keeps the drama register of Dallas Buyers Club but asks for a colder reading of it.
Flicka (2006)
Keeps the drama register of Walk the Line but asks for a colder reading of it.
3:10 to Yuma (2007)
A deliberate change of key after Flicka — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022)
A deliberate change of key after 3:10 to Yuma — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
James Mangold
Director
2 films together
Notably Walk the Line
Jonas Pate
Director
1 film together
Notably Shrink
Michael Cuesta
Director
1 film together
Notably Tell-Tale
Joe Carnahan
Director
1 film together
Notably The Grey
Jean-Marc Vallée
Director
1 film together
Notably Dallas Buyers Club
Joe Lynch
Director
1 film together
Notably Mayhem
Edward Norton
Director
1 film together
Notably Motherless Brooklyn
Rian Johnson
Director
1 film together
Notably Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Joe Lo Truglio
Director
1 film together
Notably Outpost
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
James Mangold
Director
2 films together · 7.3 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Walk the LineJean-Marc Vallée
Director
1 film together · 8.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Dallas Buyers ClubRian Johnson
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Glass Onion: A Knives Out MysteryEdward Norton
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Motherless BrooklynJoe Carnahan
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 GreyJoe Lynch
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
MayhemJonas Pate
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
ShrinkMichael Cuesta
Director
1 film together · 5.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Tell-TaleJoe Lo Truglio
Director
1 film together · 4.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
OutpostSix 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
Dallas Buyers Club
as David Wayne
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Dallas Buyers Club
as David Wayne
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Dallas Buyers Club
as David Wayne
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
as Devon Debella
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Dallas Buyers Club
as David Wayne
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. Dallas Roberts 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
9 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
Dallas Buyers Club
as David Wayne
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
as Devon Debella
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Dallas Buyers Club
as David Wayne
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
as Devon Debella
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Dallas Buyers Club
as David Wayne
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Grey
as Pete Henrick
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Walk the Line
as Sam Phillips
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Dallas Buyers Club
as David Wayne
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Reference
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