Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#20958
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Jack Lemmon represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 66 years in, and Jack is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Jack Lemmon appears in 16 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Jack. The Apartment is the clearest case: a film rated 8.0 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 documentary, romance, fantasy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Robert Redford, Kenneth Branagh, Robert Altman and others, Jack Lemmon 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 Apartment (1960) as C.C. Baxter · Some Like It Hot (1959) as Jerry (Daphne) · The Real Charlie Chaplin (2021) as Self (archive footage) (uncredited)
Career snapshot
Ranked #20958 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
16
1955–2021
Career length
66 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.0
The Apartment
Average Nutevio score
7.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.2
The Apartment
Most frequent director
Billy Wilder
4 films together
Longest collaboration
4×
With Billy Wilder
Most common genre
Drama
11 titles
Average runtime
2h 19m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.5
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
7.2
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
7.6 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. The Real Charlie Chaplin — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
7.6
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
7.6
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1950s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Some Like It Hot, Bell, Book and Candle, Mister Roberts.
Most productive era
1960s
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 | 1950s | 1960s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.71 film | 7.33 films | 6.91 film | 7.35 films | 6.61 film | — |
| Action | — | 6.91 film | — | — | — | — |
| Thriller | — | — | 6.91 film | 7.32 films | — | — |
| Comedy | 7.13 films | 7.25 films | — | 7.22 films | — | — |
| Crime | 8.01 film | 6.91 film | — | 7.22 films | — | — |
| Romance | 7.32 films | 7.33 films | — | — | 6.61 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1955Mister Roberts
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Ensign Frank Pulver.
Highest rated performance
1959Some Like It Hot
8.0 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
1960The Apartment
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 Self (archive footage) (uncredited).
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.
16 of 16 films
as C.C. Baxter
Directed by Billy Wilder
as Jerry (Daphne)
Directed by Billy Wilder
as Felix Ungar
Directed by Gene Saks
as Paul Finnigan
Directed by Robert Altman
as Shelley Levene
Directed by James Foley
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
C.C. Baxter
The Apartment (1960)
Performance score8.5
The performance the rest of the career is read through. C.C. Baxter gives Jack Lemmon a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Jerry (Daphne)
Some Like It Hot (1959)
Performance score8.2
Some Like It Hot asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Jerry (Daphne) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Felix Ungar
The Odd Couple (1968)
Performance score7.7
The Odd Couple asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Felix Ungar is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Paul Finnigan
Short Cuts (1993)
Performance score7.6
Short Cuts asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Paul Finnigan 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 C.C. Baxter
Start here. The Apartment is the clearest statement of what Jack Lemmon does — accessible, 126 minutes, and rated 8.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Jack 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.
Some Like It Hot (1959)
Same director as The Apartment, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
The Odd Couple (1968)
Keeps the comedy register of Some Like It Hot but asks for a colder reading of it.
Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
A deliberate change of key after The Odd Couple — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Short Cuts (1993)
Keeps the drama register of Glengarry Glen Ross but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Billy Wilder
Director
4 films together
Notably The Apartment
Robert Altman
Director
2 films together
Notably Short Cuts
John Ford
Director
1 film together
Notably Mister Roberts
Richard Quine
Director
1 film together
Notably Bell, Book and Candle
Blake Edwards
Director
1 film together
Notably The Great Race
Gene Saks
Director
1 film together
Notably The Odd Couple
Costa-Gavras
Director
1 film together
Notably Missing
Oliver Stone
Director
1 film together
Notably JFK
James Foley
Director
1 film together
Notably Glengarry Glen Ross
Kenneth Branagh
Director
1 film together
Notably Hamlet
Robert Redford
Director
1 film together
Notably The Legend of Bagger Vance
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Billy Wilder
Director
4 films together · 7.5 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 4 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The ApartmentRobert Altman
Director
2 films together · 7.2 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Short CutsOliver Stone
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
JFKKenneth Branagh
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
HamletJames Foley
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Glengarry Glen RossGene Saks
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Odd CoupleCosta-Gavras
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
MissingBlake Edwards
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Great RaceJohn Ford
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mister RobertsRobert Redford
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Legend of Bagger VanceRichard Quine
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Bell, Book and CandleSix 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 Apartment
as C.C. Baxter
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 Apartment
as C.C. Baxter
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Some Like It Hot
as Jerry (Daphne)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Player
as Jack Lemmon
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Apartment
as C.C. Baxter
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. Jack Lemmon 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
66 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
11 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
The Apartment
as C.C. Baxter
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Glengarry Glen Ross
as Shelley Levene
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Legend of Bagger Vance
as Narrator (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Glengarry Glen Ross
as Shelley Levene
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Great Race
as Professor Fate
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Great Race
as Professor Fate
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Great Race
as Professor Fate
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Real Charlie Chaplin
as Self (archive footage) (uncredited)
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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