Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3921
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
David Harewood 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.
David Harewood appears in 12 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without David. Blood Diamond is the clearest case: a film rated 7.6 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 drama, tv movie, documentary. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Henry Selick, Massimo Fenati, Justin Chadwick and others, David Harewood 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.
Blood Diamond (2006) as Captain Poison · The Merchant of Venice (2004) as Prince of Morocco · The Canterville Ghost (2023) as Hiram Otis (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #3921 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
12
2004–2026
Career length
22 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.6
Blood Diamond
Average Nutevio score
5.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.6
Blood Diamond
Most frequent director
Henry Selick
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Henry Selick
Most common genre
Drama
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 46m
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
6.3
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
2000s
7.2 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Blood Diamond, The Merchant of Venice — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
7.2
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
7.2
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. Blood Diamond, The Merchant of Venice.
Most productive era
2010s
5 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 | 7.22 films | 6.22 films | 3.71 film |
| Action | 7.61 film | 6.02 films | — |
| Thriller | 7.61 film | 6.01 film | — |
| Comedy | — | 6.01 film | 6.72 films |
| Romance | 6.81 film | 6.22 films | — |
| Horror | — | 6.01 film | 6.61 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Prince of Morocco.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2006Blood Diamond
7.6 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 Narrator (Voice).
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.
12 of 12 films
as Captain Poison
Directed by Edward Zwick
as Narrator
Directed by Massimo Fenati
as Prince of Morocco
Directed by Michael Radford
as Hiram Otis (voice)
Directed by Unknown
as Lane Klaxon (voice)
Directed by Henry Selick
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
Captain Poison
Blood Diamond (2006)
Performance score7.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Captain Poison gives David Harewood a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Narrator
The Abominable Snow Baby (2021)
Performance score7.2
The Abominable Snow Baby asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Narrator is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Prince of Morocco
The Merchant of Venice (2004)
Performance score6.7
The Merchant of Venice asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Prince of Morocco is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Hiram Otis (voice)
The Canterville Ghost (2023)
Performance score6.6
The Canterville Ghost asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Hiram Otis (voice) 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 Captain Poison
Start here. Blood Diamond is the clearest statement of what David Harewood does — accessible, 143 minutes, and rated 7.6 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet David 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 Merchant of Venice (2004)
Keeps the drama register of Blood Diamond but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Abominable Snow Baby (2021)
A deliberate change of key after The Merchant of Venice — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Wendell & Wild (2022)
Keeps the animation register of The Abominable Snow Baby but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Canterville Ghost (2023)
Keeps the comedy register of Wendell & Wild but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Michael Radford
Director
1 film together
Notably The Merchant of Venice
Edward Zwick
Director
1 film together
Notably Blood Diamond
Paul Haggis
Director
1 film together
Notably Third Person
Bharat Nalluri
Director
1 film together
Notably Spooks: The Greater Good
Louis Leterrier
Director
1 film together
Notably Grimsby
Justin Chadwick
Director
1 film together
Notably Tulip Fever
Massimo Fenati
Director
1 film together
Notably The Abominable Snow Baby
Henry Selick
Director
1 film together
Notably Wendell & Wild
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Edward Zwick
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Blood DiamondMichael Radford
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Merchant of VeniceHenry Selick
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Wendell & WildMassimo Fenati
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 Abominable Snow BabyJustin Chadwick
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Tulip FeverLouis Leterrier
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
GrimsbyBharat Nalluri
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Spooks: The Greater GoodPaul Haggis
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Third PersonSix 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
Blood Diamond
as Captain Poison
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
The Merchant of Venice
as Prince of Morocco
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Blood Diamond
as Captain Poison
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Third Person
as Jake
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Blood Diamond
as Captain Poison
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. David Harewood 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
22 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
5 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
Blood Diamond
as Captain Poison
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Blood Diamond
as Captain Poison
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Tulip Fever
as Mr. Prater
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Blood Diamond
as Captain Poison
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Blood Diamond
as Captain Poison
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Grimsby
as Black Gareth
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Wendell & Wild
as Lane Klaxon (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Grimsby
as Black Gareth
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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