Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#28575
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Robert Lindsay works on quiet performance 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.
Robert Lindsay appears in 4 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Robert. Maleficent: Mistress of Evil is the clearest case: a film rated 7.3 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, emotional range, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for fantasy, adventure, family. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Joachim Rønning, Olivier Dahan, Richard Loncraine and others, Robert Lindsay 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.
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019) as King John · Wimbledon (2004) as Ian Frazier · Fierce Creatures (1997) as Sydney Lotterby
Career snapshot
Ranked #28575 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
4
1997–2019
Career length
22 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.3
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
Average Nutevio score
6.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
Most frequent director
Joachim Rønning
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Joachim Rønning
Most common genre
Romance
3 titles
Average runtime
1h 43m
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
2010s
6.7 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, Grace of Monaco — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.7
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.7
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. Fierce Creatures.
Most productive era
2010s
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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | — | 6.01 film |
| Comedy | 6.21 film | 6.21 film | — |
| Romance | 6.21 film | 6.21 film | 6.01 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1997Fierce Creatures
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Sydney Lotterby.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2019Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
7.3 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. The current state of the argument, as King John.
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.
4 of 4 films
as King John
Directed by Joachim Rønning
as Aristotle Onassis
Directed by Olivier Dahan
as Ian Frazier
Directed by Richard Loncraine
as Sydney Lotterby
Directed by Robert Young
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 John
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. King John gives Robert Lindsay a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Aristotle Onassis
Grace of Monaco (2014)
Performance score6.5
Grace of Monaco asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Aristotle Onassis is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Ian Frazier
Wimbledon (2004)
Performance score6.5
Wimbledon asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Ian Frazier is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Sydney Lotterby
Fierce Creatures (1997)
Performance score6.5
Fierce Creatures asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Sydney Lotterby 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 John
Start here. Maleficent: Mistress of Evil is the clearest statement of what Robert Lindsay does — accessible, 119 minutes, and rated 7.3 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Robert 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.
Fierce Creatures (1997)
A deliberate change of key after Maleficent: Mistress of Evil — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Wimbledon (2004)
Keeps the romance register of Fierce Creatures but asks for a colder reading of it.
Grace of Monaco (2014)
Keeps the romance register of Wimbledon but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Robert Young
Director
1 film together
Notably Fierce Creatures
Richard Loncraine
Director
1 film together
Notably Wimbledon
Olivier Dahan
Director
1 film together
Notably Grace of Monaco
Joachim Rønning
Director
1 film together
Notably Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Joachim Rønning
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Maleficent: Mistress of EvilRichard Loncraine
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
WimbledonRobert Young
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fierce CreaturesOlivier Dahan
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Grace of MonacoSix 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
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
as King John
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Grace of Monaco
as Aristotle Onassis
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
as King John
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
as King John
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
as King John
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. Robert Lindsay 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
22 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.
Romance Legend
Awarded
3 catalogue titles in romance, 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
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
as King John
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
as King John
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Grace of Monaco
as Aristotle Onassis
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
as King John
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
as King John
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
as King John
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Grace of Monaco
as Aristotle Onassis
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Fierce Creatures
as Sydney Lotterby
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: family and comedy
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: family and comedy
Tom Wilkinson
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Catherine Lagaʻaia
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and family
Dwayne Johnson
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and family
Have your say
Community
Which Robert Lindsay performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
Join the conversation
Reference
Continue exploring
Trending performers
Directors they work with
Collections to read next
