Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#11690
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Oliver Reed represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 32 years in, and Oliver is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Oliver Reed appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Oliver. Gladiator 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, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for action, adventure, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Ridley Scott, Terry Gilliam, David Cronenberg and others, Oliver Reed 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.
Gladiator (2000) as Proximo · The Devils (1971) as Father Urbain Grandier · The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) as Vulcan
Career snapshot
Ranked #11690 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
1968–2000
Career length
32 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.5
Gladiator
Average Nutevio score
6.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.2
Gladiator
Most frequent director
Ken Russell
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Ken Russell
Most common genre
Adventure
4 titles
Average runtime
2h 3m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.1
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
6.9
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
2000s
8.5 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Gladiator — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
8.5
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
8.2
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1960s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Oliver!.
Most productive era
1970s
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 | 1960s | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.81 film | 6.82 films | — | — | 8.51 film |
| Action | — | 6.61 film | — | — | 8.51 film |
| Thriller | — | 6.41 film | — | — | — |
| Comedy | — | — | 7.01 film | — | — |
| Romance | — | 6.61 film | — | — | — |
| Horror | — | 6.73 films | — | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1968Oliver!
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Bill Sikes.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2000Gladiator
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. The current state of the argument, as Proximo.
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.
9 of 9 films
as Proximo
Directed by Ridley Scott
as Father Urbain Grandier
Directed by Ken Russell
as Dr. Hal Raglan
Directed by David Cronenberg
as Bill Sikes
Directed by Carol Reed
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
Proximo
Gladiator (2000)
Performance score8.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Proximo gives Oliver Reed a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Father Urbain Grandier
The Devils (1971)
Performance score7.5
The Devils asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Father Urbain Grandier is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Dr. Hal Raglan
The Brood (1979)
Performance score7.4
The Brood asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Dr. Hal Raglan is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Frank
Tommy (1975)
Performance score7.2
Tommy asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. 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 Proximo
Start here. Gladiator is the clearest statement of what Oliver Reed does — accessible, 155 minutes, and rated 8.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Oliver 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.
Oliver! (1968)
Keeps the drama register of Gladiator but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Devils (1971)
Keeps the drama register of Oliver! but asks for a colder reading of it.
Tommy (1975)
Same director as The Devils, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
The Brood (1979)
A deliberate change of key after Tommy — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Ken Russell
Director
2 films together
Notably The Devils
Carol Reed
Director
1 film together
Notably Oliver!
Richard Lester
Director
1 film together
Notably The Three Musketeers
Dan Curtis
Director
1 film together
Notably Burnt Offerings
David Cronenberg
Director
1 film together
Notably The Brood
Terry Gilliam
Director
1 film together
Notably The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
Ridley Scott
Director
1 film together
Notably Gladiator
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Ken Russell
Director
2 films together · 6.8 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The DevilsRidley Scott
Director
1 film together · 8.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
GladiatorTerry Gilliam
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 Adventures of Baron MunchausenCarol Reed
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Oliver!David Cronenberg
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 BroodRichard Lester
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 Three MusketeersDan Curtis
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Burnt OfferingsSix 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
Gladiator
as Proximo
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Tommy
as Frank
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Gladiator
as Proximo
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Gladiator
as Proximo
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Gladiator
as Proximo
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. Oliver Reed 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.
Adventure Legend
Awarded
4 catalogue titles in adventure, 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
Gladiator
as Proximo
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Gladiator
as Proximo
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Tommy
as Frank
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Burnt Offerings
as Ben Rolf
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Gladiator
as Proximo
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Gladiator
as Proximo
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Tommy
as Frank
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Gladiator
as Proximo
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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Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
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David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
Harry Dean Stanton
Works with the same directors — Ridley Scott
Jamie Harris
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Elliot Page
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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