Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#1764
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Patrick St. Esprit works on versatility rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Patrick St. Esprit appears in 13 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Patrick. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire 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 action, crime, thriller. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with F. Gary Gray, Todd Phillips, Chuck Russell and others, Patrick St. Esprit 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 Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013) as Romulus Thread · We Were Soldiers (2002) as General in Hallway · War Dogs (2016) as Captain Phillip Santos
Career snapshot
Ranked #1764 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
13
2002–2018
Career length
16 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.4
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.4
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Most frequent director
F. Gary Gray
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With F. Gary Gray
Most common genre
Action
8 titles
Average runtime
1h 55m
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
6.4
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
6.5 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Smokin' Aces, Must Love Dogs, We Were Soldiers — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.5
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.5
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2000s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Smokin' Aces, Must Love Dogs, We Were Soldiers.
Most productive era
2010s
10 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 | 2000s | 2010s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.55 films |
| Action | 6.82 films | 6.36 films |
| Thriller | 6.51 film | 6.35 films |
| Comedy | 6.22 films | 7.01 film |
| Crime | 6.51 film | 6.34 films |
| Romance | 5.91 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2002We Were Soldiers
Where our catalogue meets this career, as General in Hallway.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2013The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
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
2018Acts of Violence
The current state of the argument, as Hemland.
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.
13 of 13 films
as Romulus Thread
Directed by Francis Lawrence
as Captain Phillip Santos
Directed by Todd Phillips
as General in Hallway
Directed by Randall Wallace
as DS Allan
Directed by F. Gary Gray
as Weapons Commander
Directed by J.J. Abrams
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
Romulus Thread
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Romulus Thread gives Patrick St. Esprit a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Captain Phillip Santos
War Dogs (2016)
Performance score7.1
War Dogs asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Captain Phillip Santos is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
General in Hallway
We Were Soldiers (2002)
Performance score7.0
We Were Soldiers asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. General in Hallway is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
DS Allan
The Fate of the Furious (2017)
Performance score6.8
The Fate of the Furious asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. DS Allan 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 Romulus Thread
Start here. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is the clearest statement of what Patrick St. Esprit does — accessible, 146 minutes, and rated 7.4 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.
We Were Soldiers (2002)
Keeps the action register of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire but asks for a colder reading of it.
Super 8 (2011)
A deliberate change of key after We Were Soldiers — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
War Dogs (2016)
A deliberate change of key after Super 8 — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Fate of the Furious (2017)
Keeps the crime register of War Dogs but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Randall Wallace
Director
1 film together
Notably We Were Soldiers
Gary David Goldberg
Director
1 film together
Notably Must Love Dogs
Joe Carnahan
Director
1 film together
Notably Smokin' Aces
Paul Greengrass
Director
1 film together
Notably Green Zone
J.J. Abrams
Director
1 film together
Notably Super 8
Francis Lawrence
Director
1 film together
Notably The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Ivan Reitman
Director
1 film together
Notably Draft Day
James Vanderbilt
Director
1 film together
Notably Truth
Roland Emmerich
Director
1 film together
Notably Independence Day: Resurgence
Chuck Russell
Director
1 film together
Notably I Am Wrath
Todd Phillips
Director
1 film together
Notably War Dogs
F. Gary Gray
Director
1 film together
Notably The Fate of the Furious
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Francis Lawrence
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Hunger Games: Catching FireRandall Wallace
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
We Were SoldiersTodd Phillips
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
War DogsF. Gary Gray
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 Fate of the FuriousJ.J. Abrams
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Super 8Ivan Reitman
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Draft DayJames Vanderbilt
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
TruthPaul Greengrass
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Green ZoneJoe Carnahan
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Smokin' AcesGary David Goldberg
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Must Love DogsChuck Russell
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
I Am WrathRoland Emmerich
Director
1 film together · 5.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Independence Day: ResurgenceSix 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
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
as Romulus Thread
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Must Love Dogs
as Marshall
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
as Romulus Thread
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
We Were Soldiers
as General in Hallway
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
as Romulus Thread
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 St. Esprit 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.
Modern Classic Performer
Awarded
Defining performances delivered inside the last twenty-five years, in films already being taught rather than merely remembered.
Action Legend
Awarded
8 catalogue titles in action, 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
Super 8
as Weapons Commander
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Fate of the Furious
as DS Allan
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Must Love Dogs
as Marshall
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Super 8
as Weapons Commander
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
as Romulus Thread
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
as Romulus Thread
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
War Dogs
as Captain Phillip Santos
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
War Dogs
as Captain Phillip Santos
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
Community
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Reference
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