Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#4486
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Patrick McGoohan represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 47 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 McGoohan appears in 7 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Patrick. Braveheart is the clearest case: a film rated 8.1 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 science fiction, fantasy, adventure. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with John Musker, Joel Schumacher, Mel Gibson and others, Patrick McGoohan 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.
Braveheart (1995) as King Edward · Treasure Planet (2002) as Billy Bones (voice) · A Time to Kill (1996) as Judge Omar Noose
Career snapshot
Ranked #4486 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
7
1955–2002
Career length
47 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.1
Braveheart
Average Nutevio score
7.1
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.0
Braveheart
Most frequent director
John Musker
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With John Musker
Most common genre
Drama
4 titles
Average runtime
2h 7m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.2
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
7.1
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
7.8 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. A Time to Kill, Braveheart — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
7.8
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
7.7
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. The Dam Busters.
Most productive era
1970s
3 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 | 1970s | 1990s | 2000s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.61 film | 7.41 film | 7.82 films | — |
| Action | — | 6.61 film | 8.11 film | — |
| Thriller | — | 7.02 films | 7.41 film | — |
| Comedy | — | 6.42 films | — | — |
| Crime | — | 6.61 film | 7.41 film | — |
| Romance | — | 6.61 film | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1955The Dam Busters
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Guard at Door (uncredited).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1995Braveheart
8.1 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
2002Treasure Planet
The current state of the argument, as Billy Bones (voice).
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.
7 of 7 films
as King Edward
Directed by Mel Gibson
as Billy Bones (voice)
Directed by John Musker
as Judge Omar Noose
Directed by Joel Schumacher
as Roger Devereau
Directed by Arthur Hiller
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
King Edward
Braveheart (1995)
Performance score8.1
The performance the rest of the career is read through. King Edward gives Patrick McGoohan a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Warden
Escape from Alcatraz (1979)
Performance score7.7
Escape from Alcatraz asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Warden is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Billy Bones (voice)
Treasure Planet (2002)
Performance score7.4
Treasure Planet asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Billy Bones (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Judge Omar Noose
A Time to Kill (1996)
Performance score7.2
A Time to Kill asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Judge Omar Noose 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 King Edward
Start here. Braveheart is the clearest statement of what Patrick McGoohan does — accessible, 178 minutes, and rated 8.1 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.
Silver Streak (1976)
Keeps the action register of Braveheart but asks for a colder reading of it.
Escape from Alcatraz (1979)
Keeps the thriller register of Silver Streak but asks for a colder reading of it.
A Time to Kill (1996)
Keeps the drama register of Escape from Alcatraz but asks for a colder reading of it.
Treasure Planet (2002)
A deliberate change of key after A Time to Kill — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Michael Anderson
Director
1 film together
Notably The Dam Busters
Damiano Damiani
Director
1 film together
Notably A Genius, Two Friends, and an Idiot
Arthur Hiller
Director
1 film together
Notably Silver Streak
Don Siegel
Director
1 film together
Notably Escape from Alcatraz
Mel Gibson
Director
1 film together
Notably Braveheart
Joel Schumacher
Director
1 film together
Notably A Time to Kill
John Musker
Director
1 film together
Notably Treasure Planet
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Mel Gibson
Director
1 film together · 8.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BraveheartJohn Musker
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Treasure PlanetJoel Schumacher
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Time to KillDon Siegel
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Escape from AlcatrazArthur Hiller
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Silver StreakMichael Anderson
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 Dam BustersDamiano Damiani
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Genius, Two Friends, and an IdiotSix 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
Braveheart
as King Edward
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Treasure Planet
as Billy Bones (voice)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Braveheart
as King Edward
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Dam Busters
as Guard at Door (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Braveheart
as King Edward
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 McGoohan 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
47 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Drama Legend
Awarded
4 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
Braveheart
as King Edward
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
A Time to Kill
as Judge Omar Noose
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Treasure Planet
as Billy Bones (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Treasure Planet
as Billy Bones (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Braveheart
as King Edward
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Braveheart
as King Edward
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Silver Streak
as Roger Devereau
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Braveheart
as King Edward
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
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Reference
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