Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#7190
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Paul McCartney represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 63 years in, and Paul is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Paul McCartney appears in 31 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Paul. Thriller 40 is the clearest case: a film rated 8.7 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 comedy, music, adventure. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Morgan Neville, Beth McCarthy-Miller, Asif Kapadia and others, Paul McCartney 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.
Thriller 40 (2023) as Self (archive footage) · McCartney: The Hunt for the Lost Bass (2026) as Self · It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley (2025) as Self (archive footage)
Career snapshot
Ranked #7190 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
31
1964–2027
Career length
63 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.7
Thriller 40
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.7
Thriller 40
Most frequent director
Sacha Jenkins
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Sacha Jenkins
Most common genre
Music
26 titles
Average runtime
1h 48m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.9
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
7.0
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
1970s
7.0 average MV
The 1970s are where the work and the material meet. Let It Be — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1970s
7.0
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1970s
7.6
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. Yellow Submarine, Magical Mystery Tour, Help!.
Most productive era
2020s
24 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 | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Action | — | — | 6.71 film | — |
| Comedy | 6.84 films | — | — | 5.04 films |
| Crime | — | — | — | 6.01 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Paul.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2023Thriller 40
8.7 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 McKenzie (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.
31 of 31 films
as Self (archive footage)
Directed by Nelson George
as Self
Directed by Morgan Neville
as Self (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.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Self
McCartney: The Hunt for the Lost Bass (2026)
Performance score8.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Self gives Paul McCartney a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Self (archive footage)
Thriller 40 (2023)
Performance score8.8
Thriller 40 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self (archive footage) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Self (archive footage)
Paul McCartney at the BBC (2021)
Performance score8.3
Paul McCartney at the BBC asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self (archive footage) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Self
Man on the Run (2026)
Performance score8.1
Man on the Run asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self 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 Self
Start here. McCartney: The Hunt for the Lost Bass is the clearest statement of what Paul McCartney does — accessible, 90 minutes, and rated 8.4 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Paul 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.
Paul McCartney at the BBC (2021)
Same director as McCartney: The Hunt for the Lost Bass, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Thriller 40 (2023)
Keeps the music register of Paul McCartney at the BBC but asks for a colder reading of it.
It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley (2025)
Keeps the music register of Thriller 40 but asks for a colder reading of it.
Man on the Run (2026)
Keeps the music register of It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Richard Lester
Director
2 films together
Notably A Hard Day's Night
Sacha Jenkins
Director
2 films together
Notably Sunday Best: The Untold Story of Ed Sullivan
Bernard Knowles
Director
1 film together
Notably Magical Mystery Tour
George Dunning
Director
1 film together
Notably Yellow Submarine
Michael Lindsay-Hogg
Director
1 film together
Notably Let It Be
Espen Sandberg
Director
1 film together
Notably Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
Mat Whitecross
Director
1 film together
Notably The Sound of 007
George Michael
Director
1 film together
Notably George Michael: Freedom Uncut
Chris Smith
Director
1 film together
Notably WHAM!
Nelson George
Director
1 film together
Notably Thriller 40
Frank Marshall
Director
1 film together
Notably The Beach Boys
Rob Reiner
Director
1 film together
Notably Spinal Tap II: The End Continues
Asif Kapadia
Director
1 film together
Notably Kenny Dalglish
Beth McCarthy-Miller
Director
1 film together
Notably SNL50: The Homecoming Concert
Morgan Neville
Director
1 film together
Notably Man on the Run
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Richard Lester
Director
2 films together · 6.9 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
A Hard Day's NightSacha Jenkins
Director
2 films together · 6.7 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Sunday Best: The Untold Story of Ed SullivanNelson George
Director
1 film together · 8.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Thriller 40Morgan Neville
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Man on the RunChris Smith
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
WHAM!Mat Whitecross
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 Sound of 007George Michael
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
George Michael: Freedom UncutMichael Lindsay-Hogg
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Let It BeGeorge Dunning
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Yellow SubmarineEspen Sandberg
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No TalesFrank Marshall
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 Beach BoysBeth McCarthy-Miller
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SNL50: The Homecoming ConcertBernard Knowles
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Magical Mystery TourRob Reiner
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Spinal Tap II: The End ContinuesAsif Kapadia
Director
1 film together · 4.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Kenny DalglishSix 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
Thriller 40
as Self (archive footage)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Yellow Submarine
as Paul (uncredited)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Thriller 40
as Self (archive footage)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
SNL50: The Homecoming Concert
as Self
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
McCartney: The Hunt for the Lost Bass
as Self
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. Paul McCartney 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
63 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.
Music Legend
Awarded
26 catalogue titles in music, 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
Thriller 40
as Self (archive footage)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Thriller 40
as Self (archive footage)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Yellow Submarine
as Paul (uncredited)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
as Uncle Jack
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Thriller 40
as Self (archive footage)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
as Uncle Jack
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Yellow Submarine
as Paul (uncredited)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley
as Self (archive footage)
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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