Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#1155
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Patrick Fischler represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 32 years in, and Patrick is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Patrick Fischler appears in 23 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Patrick. Mulholland Drive is the clearest case: a film rated 7.8 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 romance, comedy, horror. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Aaron Sorkin, Cord Jefferson, Chloe Domont and others, Patrick Fischler 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.
Mulholland Drive (2001) as Dan · American Fiction (2023) as Mandel · Speed (1994) as Friend of Executive
Career snapshot
Ranked #1155 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
23
1994–2026
Career length
32 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.8
Mulholland Drive
Average Nutevio score
6.1
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.8
Mulholland Drive
Most frequent director
Jan de Bont
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Jan de Bont
Most common genre
Comedy
11 titles
Average runtime
1h 45m
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
6.5
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
6.9 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Twister, Speed, Swimming with Sharks — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
6.9
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. Twister, Speed, Swimming with Sharks.
Most productive era
2010s
7 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 | 6.84 films | 6.13 films | 4.53 films |
| Action | 7.02 films | — | 6.51 film | — |
| Thriller | 7.31 film | 6.72 films | 5.52 films | 6.32 films |
| Comedy | 6.61 film | 6.64 films | 6.04 films | 7.32 films |
| Crime | 6.61 film | — | 6.33 films | — |
| Romance | — | 6.61 film | 5.81 film | 6.82 films |
| Horror | — | — | 5.01 film | 6.43 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1994Speed
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Friend of Executive.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2001Mulholland Drive
7.8 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
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.
23 of 23 films
as Dan
Directed by David Lynch
as Mandel
Directed by Cord Jefferson
as Friend of Executive
Directed by Jan de Bont
as Masterpiece Video Clerk
Directed by Terry Zwigoff
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
Dan
Mulholland Drive (2001)
Performance score7.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Dan gives Patrick Fischler a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Mandel
American Fiction (2023)
Performance score7.2
American Fiction asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mandel is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Friend of Executive
Speed (1994)
Performance score7.2
Speed asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Friend of Executive is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Rudolph
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026)
Performance score7.1
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Rudolph 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 Dan
Start here. Mulholland Drive is the clearest statement of what Patrick Fischler does — accessible, 147 minutes, and rated 7.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Patrick 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.
Speed (1994)
Keeps the thriller register of Mulholland Drive but asks for a colder reading of it.
Ghost World (2001)
A deliberate change of key after Speed — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
American Fiction (2023)
Keeps the comedy register of Ghost World but asks for a colder reading of it.
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026)
Keeps the comedy register of American Fiction but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Jan de Bont
Director
2 films together
Notably Speed
George Huang
Director
1 film together
Notably Swimming with Sharks
Terry Zwigoff
Director
1 film together
Notably Ghost World
David Lynch
Director
1 film together
Notably Mulholland Drive
Todd Phillips
Director
1 film together
Notably Old School
Nancy Meyers
Director
1 film together
Notably Something's Gotta Give
Jay Roach
Director
1 film together
Notably Dinner for Schmucks
Baltasar Kormákur
Director
1 film together
Notably 2 Guns
Warren Beatty
Director
1 film together
Notably Rules Don't Apply
Joel Coen
Director
1 film together
Notably Hail, Caesar!
David Robert Mitchell
Director
1 film together
Notably Under the Silver Lake
Chloe Domont
Director
1 film together
Notably Fair Play
Cord Jefferson
Director
1 film together
Notably American Fiction
Aaron Sorkin
Director
1 film together
Notably The Social Reckoning
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Jan de Bont
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
SpeedDavid Lynch
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mulholland DriveCord Jefferson
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
American FictionTerry Zwigoff
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Ghost WorldNancy Meyers
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Something's Gotta GiveTodd Phillips
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Old SchoolGeorge Huang
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Swimming with SharksBaltasar Kormákur
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
2 GunsChloe Domont
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fair PlayDavid Robert Mitchell
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Under the Silver LakeJoel Coen
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hail, Caesar!Warren Beatty
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Rules Don't ApplyJay Roach
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Dinner for SchmucksAaron Sorkin
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Social ReckoningSix 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
Mulholland Drive
as Dan
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Fair Play
as Robert Bynes
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Mulholland Drive
as Dan
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Something's Gotta Give
as Stage Manager
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Mulholland Drive
as Dan
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. Patrick Fischler 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.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
11 catalogue titles in comedy, 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
Mulholland Drive
as Dan
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Mulholland Drive
as Dan
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Fair Play
as Robert Bynes
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Mulholland Drive
as Dan
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Speed
as Friend of Executive
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Twister
as The Communicator
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Something's Gotta Give
as Stage Manager
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Twister
as The Communicator
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Christian Bale
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David Krumholtz
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Cillian Murphy
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Have your say
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Reference
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