Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#69232
of 909177 performers
Top 10%
Ted Hartley represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 45 years in, and Ted is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Ted Hartley appears in 5 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Ted. High Plains Drifter is the clearest case: a film rated 7.2 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, drama, action. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Andy Fickman, Ron Underwood, Clint Eastwood and others, Ted Hartley 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.
High Plains Drifter (1973) as Lewis Belding · Barefoot in the Park (1967) as Frank · A Late Quartet (2012) as Winning Bidder
Career snapshot
Ranked #69232 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
5
1967–2012
Career length
45 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.2
High Plains Drifter
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
High Plains Drifter
Most frequent director
Andy Fickman
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Andy Fickman
Most common genre
Drama
2 titles
Average runtime
1h 46m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.0
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
6.8
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
7.2 average MV
The 1970s are where the work and the material meet. High Plains Drifter — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1970s
7.2
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1970s
7.3
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. Barefoot in the Park.
Most productive era
1960s
1 film
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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 7.21 film | — | — | 6.71 film |
| Action | — | — | 6.31 film | 5.81 film | — |
| Thriller | — | — | — | 5.81 film | — |
| Comedy | 6.91 film | — | — | — | — |
| Romance | 6.91 film | — | — | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Frank.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
7.2 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
2012A Late Quartet
The current state of the argument, as Winning Bidder.
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.
5 of 5 films
as Lewis Belding
Directed by Clint Eastwood
as Winning Bidder
Directed by Unknown
as Four-Star General V. Lewton
Directed by Andy Fickman
as Society Man
Directed by Ron Underwood
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
Lewis Belding
High Plains Drifter (1973)
Performance score7.1
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Lewis Belding gives Ted Hartley a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Frank
Barefoot in the Park (1967)
Performance score6.8
Barefoot in the Park asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Frank is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Winning Bidder
A Late Quartet (2012)
Performance score6.6
A Late Quartet asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Winning Bidder is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Four-Star General V. Lewton
Race to Witch Mountain (2009)
Performance score6.5
Race to Witch Mountain asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Four-Star General V. Lewton 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 Lewis Belding
Start here. High Plains Drifter is the clearest statement of what Ted Hartley does — accessible, 106 minutes, and rated 7.2 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Ted 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.
Barefoot in the Park (1967)
A deliberate change of key after High Plains Drifter — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Mighty Joe Young (1998)
A deliberate change of key after Barefoot in the Park — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Race to Witch Mountain (2009)
Keeps the action register of Mighty Joe Young but asks for a colder reading of it.
A Late Quartet (2012)
A deliberate change of key after Race to Witch Mountain — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Gene Saks
Director
1 film together
Notably Barefoot in the Park
Clint Eastwood
Director
1 film together
Notably High Plains Drifter
Ron Underwood
Director
1 film together
Notably Mighty Joe Young
Andy Fickman
Director
1 film together
Notably Race to Witch Mountain
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Clint Eastwood
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
High Plains DrifterGene Saks
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Barefoot in the ParkRon Underwood
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mighty Joe YoungAndy Fickman
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Race to Witch MountainSix 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
High Plains Drifter
as Lewis Belding
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
A Late Quartet
as Winning Bidder
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
High Plains Drifter
as Lewis Belding
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Mighty Joe Young
as Society Man
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
High Plains Drifter
as Lewis Belding
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. Ted Hartley 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
45 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
2 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
High Plains Drifter
as Lewis Belding
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
High Plains Drifter
as Lewis Belding
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
A Late Quartet
as Winning Bidder
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
High Plains Drifter
as Lewis Belding
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
High Plains Drifter
as Lewis Belding
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Race to Witch Mountain
as Four-Star General V. Lewton
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
A Late Quartet
as Winning Bidder
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
A Late Quartet
as Winning Bidder
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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