Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#10972
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
François Cluzet represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 33 years in, and François is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
François Cluzet appears in 13 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without François. The Intouchables is the clearest case: a film rated 8.5 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 romance, comedy, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Sydney Sibilia, Olivier Nakache, Lawrence Kasdan and others, François Cluzet 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.
The Intouchables (2011) as Philippe · Little White Lies (2010) as Max Cantara · Rose Island (2020) as Jean Baptiste Toma'
Career snapshot
Ranked #10972 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
13
1994–2027
Career length
33 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.5
The Intouchables
Average Nutevio score
6.0
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.3
The Intouchables
Most frequent director
Sydney Sibilia
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Sydney Sibilia
Most common genre
Comedy
10 titles
Average runtime
1h 42m
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
2010s
7.3 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Claude Chabrol, the Maverick, The Intouchables, Little White Lies — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.3
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
7.2
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1990s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. French Kiss, Prêt-à-Porter.
Most productive era
2020s
8 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 | 1990s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.51 film | 7.82 films | 6.34 films |
| Comedy | 5.82 films | 7.82 films | 5.56 films |
| Crime | — | — | 6.81 film |
| Romance | 6.51 film | — | 3.42 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1994Prêt-à-Porter
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Nina's Assistant.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2011The Intouchables
8.5 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
2027Mystik
The current state of the argument.
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 Philippe
Directed by Olivier Nakache
as Simon Laurenti
Directed by Unknown
as Jean Baptiste Toma'
Directed by Sydney Sibilia
as Lorenzo
Directed by Unknown
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
Philippe
The Intouchables (2011)
Performance score8.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Philippe gives François Cluzet a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Max Cantara
Little White Lies (2010)
Performance score7.7
Little White Lies asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Max Cantara is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Simon Laurenti
Masquerade (2022)
Performance score7.2
Masquerade asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Simon Laurenti is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Jean Baptiste Toma'
Rose Island (2020)
Performance score7.1
Rose Island asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Jean Baptiste Toma' 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 Philippe
Start here. The Intouchables is the clearest statement of what François Cluzet does — accessible, 113 minutes, and rated 8.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet François 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.
Little White Lies (2010)
Keeps the comedy register of The Intouchables but asks for a colder reading of it.
Rose Island (2020)
Keeps the comedy register of Little White Lies but asks for a colder reading of it.
Masquerade (2022)
Keeps the comedy register of Rose Island but asks for a colder reading of it.
Kitchen Brigade (2022)
Same director as Masquerade, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Robert Altman
Director
1 film together
Notably Prêt-à-Porter
Lawrence Kasdan
Director
1 film together
Notably French Kiss
Olivier Nakache
Director
1 film together
Notably The Intouchables
Sydney Sibilia
Director
1 film together
Notably Rose Island
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Olivier Nakache
Director
1 film together · 8.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The IntouchablesSydney Sibilia
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Rose IslandLawrence Kasdan
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
French KissRobert Altman
Director
1 film together · 5.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Prêt-à-PorterSix 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
The Intouchables
as Philippe
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
French Kiss
as Bob
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
The Intouchables
as Philippe
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Prêt-à-Porter
as Nina's Assistant
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Intouchables
as Philippe
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. François Cluzet 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
33 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
10 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
The Intouchables
as Philippe
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Intouchables
as Philippe
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
French Kiss
as Bob
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Man in the Basement
as Jacques Fonzic
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Intouchables
as Philippe
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Poly
as Victor
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Masquerade
as Simon Laurenti
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Intouchables
as Philippe
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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