Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#11302
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Patrick Troughton represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 76 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 Troughton appears in 11 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Patrick. Doctor Who: The Husbands of River Song is the clearest case: a film rated 8.0 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 music, tv movie, documentary. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Douglas Mackinnon, Nick Hurran, Sam Wanamaker and others, Patrick Troughton 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.
Doctor Who: The Husbands of River Song (2015) as The Doctor (2) (picture) (uncredited) · Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor (2013) as The Doctor (2) (archive footage) · The Red Shoes (1948) as BBC Radio Announcer (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #11302 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
11
1948–2024
Career length
76 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.0
Doctor Who: The Husbands of River Song
Average Nutevio score
6.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.2
Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor
Most frequent director
Douglas Mackinnon
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Douglas Mackinnon
Most common genre
Adventure
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 34m
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
7.2
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
2010s
7.8 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Doctor Who: The Husbands of River Song, Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
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
2010s
8.1
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1940s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Red Shoes.
Most productive era
1950s
2 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 | 1940s | 1950s | 1960s | 1970s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.51 film | 6.41 film | — | — | 8.01 film | — |
| Action | — | — | — | 6.51 film | — | — |
| Thriller | — | — | — | 7.31 film | — | — |
| Comedy | — | — | — | — | 8.01 film | — |
| Romance | 7.51 film | — | — | — | — | — |
| Horror | — | — | 6.41 film | 7.31 film | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1948The Red Shoes
Where our catalogue meets this career, as BBC Radio Announcer (voice).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2015Doctor Who: The Husbands of River Song
8.0 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, as The Doctor (2) (archive footage).
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.
11 of 11 films
as The Doctor (2) (picture) (uncredited)
Directed by Douglas Mackinnon
as The Doctor (2) (archive footage)
Directed by Nick Hurran
as Father Brennan
Directed by Richard Donner
as BBC Radio Announcer (voice)
Directed by Michael Powell
as The Doctor (2) (archive footage)
Directed by Unknown
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
The Doctor (2) (picture) (uncredited)
Doctor Who: The Husbands of River Song (2015)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. The Doctor (2) (picture) (uncredited) gives Patrick Troughton a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
The Doctor (2) (archive footage)
Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor (2013)
Performance score7.5
Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. The Doctor (2) (archive footage) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Father Brennan
The Omen (1976)
Performance score7.4
The Omen asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Father Brennan is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
BBC Radio Announcer (voice)
The Red Shoes (1948)
Performance score7.3
The Red Shoes asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. BBC Radio Announcer (voice) 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 The Doctor (2) (picture) (uncredited)
Start here. Doctor Who: The Husbands of River Song is the clearest statement of what Patrick Troughton does — accessible, 60 minutes, and rated 8.0 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.
The Red Shoes (1948)
Keeps the drama register of Doctor Who: The Husbands of River Song but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Omen (1976)
A deliberate change of key after The Red Shoes — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor (2013)
A deliberate change of key after The Omen — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Doctor Who at the Proms (2024)
A deliberate change of key after Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Michael Powell
Director
1 film together
Notably The Red Shoes
Byron Haskin
Director
1 film together
Notably Treasure Island
Michael Anderson
Director
1 film together
Notably 1984
Don Chaffey
Director
1 film together
Notably Jason and the Argonauts
Terence Fisher
Director
1 film together
Notably The Gorgon
Richard Donner
Director
1 film together
Notably The Omen
Sam Wanamaker
Director
1 film together
Notably Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger
Nick Hurran
Director
1 film together
Notably Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor
Douglas Mackinnon
Director
1 film together
Notably Doctor Who: The Husbands of River Song
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Douglas Mackinnon
Director
1 film together · 8.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Doctor Who: The Husbands of River SongNick Hurran
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Doctor Who: The Day of the DoctorMichael Powell
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Red ShoesRichard Donner
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The OmenDon Chaffey
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Jason and the ArgonautsSam Wanamaker
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Sinbad and the Eye of the TigerByron Haskin
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Treasure IslandTerence Fisher
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The GorgonMichael Anderson
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
1984Six 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 Red Shoes
as BBC Radio Announcer (voice)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
The Red Shoes
as BBC Radio Announcer (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
The Red Shoes
as BBC Radio Announcer (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Doctor Who at the Proms
as The Doctor (2) (archive footage)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Doctor Who: The Husbands of River Song
as The Doctor (2) (picture) (uncredited)
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 Troughton 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
76 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.
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
Doctor Who: The Husbands of River Song
as The Doctor (2) (picture) (uncredited)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Omen
as Father Brennan
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Red Shoes
as BBC Radio Announcer (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Jason and the Argonauts
as Phineas
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor
as The Doctor (2) (archive footage)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger
as Melanthius
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Red Shoes
as BBC Radio Announcer (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Doctor Who: The Husbands of River Song
as The Doctor (2) (picture) (uncredited)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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David Krumholtz
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Have your say
Community
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Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
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Reference
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