Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#4314
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Francis Magee 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.
Francis Magee appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Francis. Zack Snyder's Justice League is the clearest case: a film rated 8.2 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 mystery, drama, horror. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Thordur Palsson, Zack Snyder, Gareth Edwards and others, Francis Magee 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.
Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021) as Ancient King of Men · Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) as Grizzly Rebel · Layer Cake (2004) as Paul
Career snapshot
Ranked #4314 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
2004–2026
Career length
22 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.2
Zack Snyder's Justice League
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.1
Zack Snyder's Justice League
Most frequent director
Zack Snyder
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Zack Snyder
Most common genre
Drama
5 titles
Average runtime
2h 0m
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
2020s
6.6 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Rose of Nevada, The Damned, My House — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
6.6
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
6.6
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. Sahara, Layer Cake.
Most productive era
2010s
4 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 | 6.42 films | 6.51 film | 6.32 films |
| Action | 5.91 film | 6.43 films | 8.21 film |
| Thriller | 6.91 film | 5.51 film | 5.71 film |
| Comedy | 5.91 film | 6.51 film | — |
| Crime | 6.91 film | 5.51 film | — |
| Horror | — | — | 5.82 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2004Layer Cake
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Paul.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2021Zack Snyder's Justice League
8.2 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
2026Rose of Nevada
The current state of the argument, as Murgey.
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.
10 of 10 films
as Ancient King of Men
Directed by Zack Snyder
as Grizzly Rebel
Directed by Gareth Edwards
as Murgey
Directed by Unknown
as Paul
Directed by Matthew Vaughn
as Skuli
Directed by Thordur Palsson
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
Ancient King of Men
Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021)
Performance score7.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Ancient King of Men gives Francis Magee a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Grizzly Rebel
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Performance score7.3
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Grizzly Rebel is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Murgey
Rose of Nevada (2026)
Performance score6.9
Rose of Nevada asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Murgey is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Paul
Layer Cake (2004)
Performance score6.8
Layer Cake asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Paul 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 Ancient King of Men
Start here. Zack Snyder's Justice League is the clearest statement of what Francis Magee does — accessible, 242 minutes, and rated 8.2 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Francis 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.
Layer Cake (2004)
A deliberate change of key after Zack Snyder's Justice League — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
A deliberate change of key after Layer Cake — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Damned (2025)
A deliberate change of key after Rogue One: A Star Wars Story — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Rose of Nevada (2026)
Keeps the mystery register of The Damned but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Zack Snyder
Director
2 films together
Notably Zack Snyder's Justice League
Matthew Vaughn
Director
1 film together
Notably Layer Cake
Breck Eisner
Director
1 film together
Notably Sahara
Ricky Gervais
Director
1 film together
Notably Cemetery Junction
Henrik Ruben Genz
Director
1 film together
Notably Good People
Gareth Edwards
Director
1 film together
Notably Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Thordur Palsson
Director
1 film together
Notably The Damned
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Zack Snyder
Director
2 films together · 7.1 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Zack Snyder's Justice LeagueGareth Edwards
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Rogue One: A Star Wars StoryMatthew Vaughn
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Layer CakeRicky Gervais
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Cemetery JunctionBreck Eisner
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SaharaThordur Palsson
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The DamnedHenrik Ruben Genz
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Good PeopleSix 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
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
as Grizzly Rebel
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Zack Snyder's Justice League
as Ancient King of Men
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Zack Snyder's Justice League
as Ancient King of Men
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Zack Snyder's Justice League
as Ancient King of Men
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Zack Snyder's Justice League
as Ancient King of Men
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. Francis Magee 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
Zack Snyder's Justice League
as Ancient King of Men
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Zack Snyder's Justice League
as Ancient King of Men
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Zack Snyder's Justice League
as Ancient King of Men
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Rose of Nevada
as Murgey
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Zack Snyder's Justice League
as Ancient King of Men
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Zack Snyder's Justice League
as Ancient King of Men
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Layer Cake
as Paul
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Zack Snyder's Justice League
as Ancient King of Men
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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