Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#1042
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Keith Carradine represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 56 years in, and Keith is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Keith Carradine appears in 17 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Keith. The Duellists is the clearest case: a film rated 7.0 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 horror, romance, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with JT Mollner, Elizabeth Guest, Chris Weitz and others, Keith Carradine 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 Duellists (1977) as Armand d'Hubert · Nashville (1975) as Tom Frank · McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) as Cowboy
Career snapshot
Ranked #1042 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
17
1971–2027
Career length
56 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.0
The Duellists
Average Nutevio score
5.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
Nashville
Most frequent director
Walter Hill
3 films together
Longest collaboration
3×
With Walter Hill
Most common genre
Drama
11 titles
Average runtime
1h 40m
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
6.6
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
1970s
7.0 average MV
The 1970s are where the work and the material meet. The Duellists, Nashville, McCabe & Mrs. Miller — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1970s
7.0
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1970s
7.2
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1970s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Duellists, Nashville, McCabe & Mrs. Miller.
Most productive era
2010s
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 | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.03 films | 6.61 film | 6.01 film | 6.21 film | 6.24 films | 6.71 film |
| Action | — | 6.61 film | 6.01 film | 6.21 film | 5.71 film | — |
| Thriller | — | 6.71 film | 6.21 film | 6.21 film | 5.92 films | 5.91 film |
| Comedy | 7.01 film | — | 6.21 film | — | 6.41 film | 0.01 film |
| Crime | — | 6.61 film | 6.21 film | 6.21 film | 6.32 films | — |
| Romance | — | — | — | — | 6.11 film | 0.01 film |
| Horror | — | — | — | — | — | 3.02 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Cowboy.
Highest rated performance
1975Nashville
7.0 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
1977The Duellists
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2027Skeletons
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.
17 of 17 films
as Armand d'Hubert
Directed by Ridley Scott
as Spencer
Directed by Walter Hill
as Jim Younger
Directed by Walter Hill
as Tom Frank
Directed by Robert Altman
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
Armand d'Hubert
The Duellists (1977)
Performance score7.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Armand d'Hubert gives Keith Carradine a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Spencer
Southern Comfort (1981)
Performance score7.4
Southern Comfort asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Spencer is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Jim Younger
The Long Riders (1980)
Performance score7.0
The Long Riders asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Jim Younger is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Tom Frank
Nashville (1975)
Performance score6.9
Nashville asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Tom Frank 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 Armand d'Hubert
Start here. The Duellists is the clearest statement of what Keith Carradine does — accessible, 100 minutes, and rated 7.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Keith 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.
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
Keeps the drama register of The Duellists but asks for a colder reading of it.
Nashville (1975)
Same director as McCabe & Mrs. Miller, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
The Long Riders (1980)
Keeps the drama register of Nashville but asks for a colder reading of it.
Southern Comfort (1981)
Same director as The Long Riders, 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.
Walter Hill
Director
3 films together
Notably Southern Comfort
Robert Altman
Director
2 films together
Notably Nashville
John Herzfeld
Director
2 films together
Notably The Death and Life of Bobby Z
David Lowery
Director
2 films together
Notably The Old Man & the Gun
Ridley Scott
Director
1 film together
Notably The Duellists
Jon Favreau
Director
1 film together
Notably Cowboys & Aliens
Jane Campion
Director
1 film together
Notably The Power of the Dog
Chris Weitz
Director
1 film together
Notably Afraid
Elizabeth Guest
Director
1 film together
Notably A Very Merry Breakup
JT Mollner
Director
1 film together
Notably Skeletons
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Walter Hill
Director
3 films together · 6.4 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Southern ComfortRobert Altman
Director
2 films together · 7.0 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
NashvilleDavid Lowery
Director
2 films together · 6.3 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The Old Man & the GunJohn Herzfeld
Director
2 films together · 6.2 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The Death and Life of Bobby ZRidley Scott
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The DuellistsJane Campion
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Power of the DogChris Weitz
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
AfraidJon Favreau
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Cowboys & AliensJT Mollner
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SkeletonsElizabeth Guest
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Very Merry BreakupSix 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
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
as Cowboy
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Ain't Them Bodies Saints
as Skerritt
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Nashville
as Tom Frank
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Old Man & the Gun
as Captain Calder
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Duellists
as Armand d'Hubert
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. Keith Carradine 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
56 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 Duellists
as Armand d'Hubert
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Death and Life of Bobby Z
as Johnson
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Ain't Them Bodies Saints
as Skerritt
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Peacock
as Ray Crill
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Long Riders
as Jim Younger
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Cowboys & Aliens
as Sheriff John Taggart
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Nashville
as Tom Frank
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Wild Bill
as Buffalo Bill Cody
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Harry Dean Stanton
Works with the same directors — Ridley Scott
Robert Downey Jr.
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Have your say
Community
Which Keith Carradine 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
