Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3500
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
George Newbern 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.
George Newbern appears in 7 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without George. Justice League: War 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, screen presence. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, tv movie, action. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Stephen Herek, Sam Liu, Ethan Spaulding and others, George Newbern 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.
Justice League: War (2014) as Steve Trevor (voice) · Justice League: Throne of Atlantis (2015) as Steve Trevor (voice) · Superman vs. The Elite (2012) as Superman / Clark Kent / Robot (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #3500 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
7
2009–2019
Career length
10 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.4
Justice League: War
Average Nutevio score
6.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.4
Justice League: War
Most frequent director
Stephen Herek
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Stephen Herek
Most common genre
Action
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 22m
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
2010s
6.9 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Same Time, Next Christmas, Justice League vs. the Fatal Five, Brimming with Love — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.9
Across 6 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. Saw VI.
Most productive era
2010s
6 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Action | — | 7.04 films |
| Thriller | 6.31 film | — |
| Romance | — | 6.62 films |
| Horror | 6.31 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2009Saw VI
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Harold.
Career peak
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
7.4 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
2019Justice League vs. the Fatal Five
The current state of the argument, as Superman (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.
7 of 7 films
as Superman / Clark Kent / Robot (voice)
Directed by Michael Chang
as Steve Trevor (voice)
Directed by Jay Oliva
as Superman (voice)
Directed by Sam Liu
as Woody Anderson
Directed by Stephen Herek
as Steve Trevor (voice)
Directed by Ethan Spaulding
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
Superman / Clark Kent / Robot (voice)
Superman vs. The Elite (2012)
Performance score7.5
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Superman / Clark Kent / Robot (voice) gives George Newbern a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Steve Trevor (voice)
Justice League: War (2014)
Performance score7.2
Justice League: War asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Steve Trevor (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Superman (voice)
Justice League vs. the Fatal Five (2019)
Performance score7.0
Justice League vs. the Fatal Five asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Superman (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Woody Anderson
Same Time, Next Christmas (2019)
Performance score6.9
Same Time, Next Christmas asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Woody Anderson 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 Superman / Clark Kent / Robot (voice)
Start here. Superman vs. The Elite is the clearest statement of what George Newbern does — accessible, 76 minutes, and rated 6.9 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet George 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.
Justice League: War (2014)
Keeps the action register of Superman vs. The Elite but asks for a colder reading of it.
Justice League: Throne of Atlantis (2015)
Keeps the action register of Justice League: War but asks for a colder reading of it.
Justice League vs. the Fatal Five (2019)
Keeps the action register of Justice League: Throne of Atlantis but asks for a colder reading of it.
Same Time, Next Christmas (2019)
A deliberate change of key after Justice League vs. the Fatal Five — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Michael Chang
Director
1 film together
Notably Superman vs. The Elite
Jay Oliva
Director
1 film together
Notably Justice League: War
Ethan Spaulding
Director
1 film together
Notably Justice League: Throne of Atlantis
Sam Liu
Director
1 film together
Notably Justice League vs. the Fatal Five
Stephen Herek
Director
1 film together
Notably Same Time, Next Christmas
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Jay Oliva
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Justice League: WarEthan Spaulding
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Justice League: Throne of AtlantisMichael Chang
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Superman vs. The EliteSam Liu
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Justice League vs. the Fatal FiveStephen Herek
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Same Time, Next ChristmasSix 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
Justice League: War
as Steve Trevor (voice)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Brimming with Love
as Addison Rickford
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Justice League: War
as Steve Trevor (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Justice League: Throne of Atlantis
as Steve Trevor (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Superman vs. The Elite
as Superman / Clark Kent / Robot (voice)
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. George Newbern 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.
Action Legend
Awarded
4 catalogue titles in action, 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
Justice League: War
as Steve Trevor (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Justice League: War
as Steve Trevor (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Brimming with Love
as Addison Rickford
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Justice League vs. the Fatal Five
as Superman (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Justice League: War
as Steve Trevor (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Justice League: Throne of Atlantis
as Steve Trevor (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Justice League vs. the Fatal Five
as Superman (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Justice League vs. the Fatal Five
as Superman (voice)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and fantasy
Elliot Page
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and fantasy
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and thriller
Catherine Lagaʻaia
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and family
Dwayne Johnson
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and family
Rena Owen
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and family
Have your say
Community
Which George Newbern performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
Join the conversation
Reference
Continue exploring
Trending performers
Directors they work with
Collections to read next
