Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#2539
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Joaquim de Almeida represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 32 years in, and Joaquim is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Joaquim de Almeida appears in 20 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Joaquim. Missing 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, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for horror, thriller, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with James Nunn, Doug Liman, Louis Leterrier and others, Joaquim de Almeida 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.
Missing (2023) as Javi · Fast X (2023) as Hernan Reyes · Fatima (2020) as Father Ferreira
Career snapshot
Ranked #2539 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
20
1994–2026
Career length
32 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.4
Missing
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.4
Missing
Most frequent director
James Nunn
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With James Nunn
Most common genre
Thriller
12 titles
Average runtime
1h 47m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.9
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
1990s
6.8 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Desperado, Only You, Clear and Present Danger — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
6.8
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
6.8
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. Desperado, Only You, Clear and Present Danger.
Most productive era
2020s
9 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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.71 film | 6.44 films | 5.91 film | 6.74 films |
| Action | 6.82 films | 6.32 films | 6.33 films | 6.83 films |
| Thriller | 6.82 films | 6.32 films | 6.33 films | 6.95 films |
| Comedy | 6.71 film | — | 6.42 films | 2.72 films |
| Crime | 6.91 film | 6.42 films | 7.12 films | 7.21 film |
| Romance | 6.71 film | 6.61 film | — | — |
| Horror | — | — | — | 7.01 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1994Only You
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Giovanni.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2023Missing
7.4 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
2026Santo António - O Casamenteiro de Lisboa
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.
20 of 20 films
as Javi
Directed by Will Merrick
as Walker
Directed by James Nunn
as Father Ferreira
Directed by Marco Pontecorvo
as Bucho
Directed by Robert Rodriguez
as Hernan Reyes
Directed by Louis Leterrier
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
Javi
Missing (2023)
Performance score7.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Javi gives Joaquim de Almeida a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Walker
Hungry (2026)
Performance score7.4
Hungry asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Walker is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Father Ferreira
Fatima (2020)
Performance score7.3
Fatima asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Father Ferreira is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Bucho
Desperado (1995)
Performance score7.3
Desperado asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Bucho 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 Javi
Start here. Missing is the clearest statement of what Joaquim de Almeida does — accessible, 111 minutes, and rated 7.4 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Joaquim 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.
Desperado (1995)
Keeps the thriller register of Missing but asks for a colder reading of it.
Fatima (2020)
A deliberate change of key after Desperado — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Fast X (2023)
A deliberate change of key after Fatima — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Hungry (2026)
Keeps the thriller register of Fast X but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Phillip Noyce
Director
1 film together
Notably Clear and Present Danger
Norman Jewison
Director
1 film together
Notably Only You
Robert Rodriguez
Director
1 film together
Notably Desperado
John Herzfeld
Director
1 film together
Notably The Death and Life of Bobby Z
Justin Lin
Director
1 film together
Notably Fast Five
David Gordon Green
Director
1 film together
Notably Our Brand Is Crisis
Patrick Hughes
Director
1 film together
Notably The Hitman's Bodyguard
Marco Pontecorvo
Director
1 film together
Notably Fatima
Roman Polanski
Director
1 film together
Notably The Palace
Will Merrick
Director
1 film together
Notably Missing
Louis Leterrier
Director
1 film together
Notably Fast X
Doug Liman
Director
1 film together
Notably Road House
James Nunn
Director
1 film together
Notably Hungry
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Will Merrick
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
MissingLouis Leterrier
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fast XMarco Pontecorvo
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
FatimaJustin Lin
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fast FiveJames Nunn
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
HungryDoug Liman
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Road HousePatrick Hughes
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 Hitman's BodyguardRobert Rodriguez
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
DesperadoNorman Jewison
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Only YouPhillip Noyce
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Clear and Present DangerJohn Herzfeld
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Death and Life of Bobby ZDavid Gordon Green
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Our Brand Is CrisisRoman Polanski
Director
1 film together · 5.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The PalaceSix 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
Fast Five
as Reyes
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 Burning Plain
as Nick Martinez
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Missing
as Javi
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Fast X
as Hernan Reyes
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Missing
as Javi
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. Joaquim de Almeida 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
32 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.
Thriller Legend
Awarded
12 catalogue titles in thriller, 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
Missing
as Javi
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Missing
as Javi
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Burning Plain
as Nick Martinez
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Missing
as Javi
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Fast X
as Hernan Reyes
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Legion
as Paetus
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Che: Part Two
as President René Barrientos
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Fast X
as Hernan Reyes
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Robert Downey Jr.
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Have your say
Community
Which Joaquim de Almeida performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
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Reference
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