Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#13633
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Dan O'Herlihy represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 43 years in, and Dan is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Dan O'Herlihy appears in 7 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Dan. RoboCop 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, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for action, science fiction, crime. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Irvin Kershner, Paul Verhoeven, Tommy Lee Wallace and others, Dan O'Herlihy 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.
RoboCop (1987) as The Old Man · Fail Safe (1964) as Brig. Gen. Warren A. Black · Odd Man Out (1947) as Nolan
Career snapshot
Ranked #13633 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
7
1947–1990
Career length
43 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.4
RoboCop
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.8
Fail Safe
Most frequent director
Irvin Kershner
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Irvin Kershner
Most common genre
Thriller
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 50m
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
6.8
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
1960s
7.3 average MV
The 1960s are where the work and the material meet. Fail Safe — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1960s
7.3
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1960s
7.8
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1940s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Odd Man Out.
Most productive era
1980s
2 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 | 1940s | 1950s | 1960s | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.91 film | 6.51 film | 7.31 film | 6.81 film | — | — |
| Action | — | 6.51 film | — | — | 7.41 film | 6.01 film |
| Thriller | 6.91 film | — | 7.31 film | — | 7.41 film | 6.01 film |
| Crime | 6.91 film | — | — | — | — | 6.01 film |
| Horror | — | — | — | — | 5.61 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1947Odd Man Out
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Nolan.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1987RoboCop
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
1990RoboCop 2
The current state of the argument, as The Old Man.
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.
7 of 7 films
as The Old Man
Directed by Paul Verhoeven
as Brig. Gen. Warren A. Black
Directed by Sidney Lumet
as Marshal Michel Ney
Directed by Sergey Bondarchuk
as Nolan
Directed by Carol Reed
as The Old Man
Directed by Irvin Kershner
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 Old Man
RoboCop (1987)
Performance score7.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. The Old Man gives Dan O'Herlihy a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Brig. Gen. Warren A. Black
Fail Safe (1964)
Performance score7.2
Fail Safe asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Brig. Gen. Warren A. Black is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Marshal Michel Ney
Waterloo (1970)
Performance score7.0
Waterloo asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Marshal Michel Ney is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Nolan
Odd Man Out (1947)
Performance score6.8
Odd Man Out asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Nolan 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 Old Man
Start here. RoboCop is the clearest statement of what Dan O'Herlihy does — accessible, 102 minutes, and rated 7.4 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Dan 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.
Odd Man Out (1947)
Keeps the thriller register of RoboCop but asks for a colder reading of it.
Fail Safe (1964)
Keeps the drama register of Odd Man Out but asks for a colder reading of it.
Waterloo (1970)
Keeps the war register of Fail Safe but asks for a colder reading of it.
RoboCop 2 (1990)
A deliberate change of key after Waterloo — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Carol Reed
Director
1 film together
Notably Odd Man Out
Henry Hathaway
Director
1 film together
Notably The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel
Sidney Lumet
Director
1 film together
Notably Fail Safe
Sergey Bondarchuk
Director
1 film together
Notably Waterloo
Tommy Lee Wallace
Director
1 film together
Notably Halloween III: Season of the Witch
Paul Verhoeven
Director
1 film together
Notably RoboCop
Irvin Kershner
Director
1 film together
Notably RoboCop 2
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Paul Verhoeven
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
RoboCopSidney Lumet
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fail SafeCarol Reed
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Odd Man OutSergey Bondarchuk
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
WaterlooHenry Hathaway
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 Desert Fox: The Story of RommelIrvin Kershner
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
RoboCop 2Tommy Lee Wallace
Director
1 film together · 5.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Halloween III: Season of the WitchSix 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
Fail Safe
as Brig. Gen. Warren A. Black
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Waterloo
as Marshal Michel Ney
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Fail Safe
as Brig. Gen. Warren A. Black
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Odd Man Out
as Nolan
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
RoboCop
as The Old Man
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. Dan O'Herlihy 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
43 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Thriller Legend
Awarded
4 catalogue titles in thriller, 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
RoboCop
as The Old Man
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
RoboCop
as The Old Man
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Waterloo
as Marshal Michel Ney
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Halloween III: Season of the Witch
as Conal Cochran
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
RoboCop
as The Old Man
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
RoboCop
as The Old Man
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Waterloo
as Marshal Michel Ney
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Halloween III: Season of the Witch
as Conal Cochran
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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