The best David Thewlis’s thriller movies
Thewlis had a minor role in an episode of the 1980s sitcom Up the Elephant and Round the Castle. He also appeared in an episode of popular sitcom Only Fools and Horses (1985) as a friend of Rodney. His first professional role was in the play Buddy Holly at the Regal in Greenwich.
Thewlis's breakout role was Naked (1993; dir. Mike Leigh), as the main character, Johnny, a homeless, highly intelligent, embittered, rambling street philosopher, for which Thewlis was named Best Actor by the National Society of Film Critics (United States), the London Film Critics Circle, the Evening Standard, the New York Film Critics' Circle and the Cannes Film Festival. That same year, he appeared on television as a sexual predator named James Jackson in Prime Suspect 3, opposite Helen Mirren and Ciarán Hinds. Before that, his first television appearance was in Valentine Park.
During the 1990s, Thewlis appeared in a variety of films, mostly fantasy and period, including Restoration (1995), Black Beauty (1994), Total Eclipse (1995) with Leonardo DiCaprio, The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996), Dragonheart (1996), and Seven Years in Tibet (1997), opposite Brad Pitt. He was nominated for a British Independent Film Award for Divorcing Jack (1998), and played Clov in a television film of Samuel Beckett's Endgame (2000). Notable appearances also include Bernardo Bertolucci's Besieged (1998) and Paul McGuigan's Gangster No. 1 (2000), opposite Paul Bettany and Malcolm McDowell.
He auditioned for the role of Quirinus Quirrell in the Chris Columbus directed film Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, but the part went to Ian Hart. Despite missing out on the first film, he was cast in 2004 as Professor Remus Lupin in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. He did not have to audition as he was director Alfonso Cuarón's first choice for the role. Thewlis reprised the role in four other films in the series.
He appeared as an SS Commandant of a Nazi death camp and father of the main character in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, which was well received. Other credits include Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven (2005), Terrence Malick's The New World (2005), and The Omen (2006).
Thewlis played the late Dr. Michael Aris, husband of Nobel Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma, with Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh as Suu Kyi, in the biopic The Lady directed by Luc Besson. In 2012, he received an International Festival of Independent Cinema Off Plus Camera Award. In the same year, he also played in Separate We Come, Separate We Go, directed by Harry Potter co-star Bonnie Wright.
In June 2015, Thewlis was reported to be filming scenes for a Donald Crowhurst biopic, The Mercy, on the beach at Teignmouth, Devon, playing Donald Crowhurst's press agent, Rodney Hallworth, while Colin Firth is playing Donald Crowhurst. He also starred in Regression, a thriller released in autumn 2015. In September 2015, Thewlis starred as Inspector Goole in Helen Edmundson's BBC TV adaptation of J. B. Priestley's An Inspector Calls. In October 2015, he played King Duncan in the film Macbeth.
Legend
6.9/10
Suave, charming and volatile, Reggie Kray and his unstable twin brother Ronnie start to leave their mark on the London underworld in the 1960s. Using violence to get what they want, the siblings orchestrate robberies and murders while running nightclubs and protection rackets. With police Detective Leonard "Nipper" Read hot on their heels, the brothers continue their rapid rise to power and achieve tabloid notoriety.
Stonehearst Asylum
6.8/10
A Harvard Medical School graduate takes a position at a mental institution and soon becomes obsessed with a female mental patient, but he has no idea of a recent and horrifying staffing change.
Basic Instinct 2
4.4/10
Novelist Catherine Tramell is once again in trouble with the law, and Scotland Yard appoints psychiatrist Dr. Michael Glass to evaluate her. Though, like Detective Nick Curran before him, Glass is entranced by Tramell and lured into a seductive game.
RED 2
6.6/10
Retired C.I.A. agent Frank Moses reunites his unlikely team of elite operatives for a global quest to track down a missing portable nuclear device.
The Fifth Estate
6.2/10
A look at the relationship between WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his early supporter and eventual colleague Daniel Domscheit-Berg, and how the website's growth and influence led to an irreparable rift between the two friends.
Regression
5.6/10
Minnesota, 1990. Detective Bruce Kenner investigates the case of young Angela, who accuses her father, John Gray, of an unspeakable crime. When John unexpectedly and without recollection admits guilt, renowned psychologist Dr. Raines is brought in to help him relive his memories and what they discover unmasks a horrifying nationwide mystery.
Anonymous
6.8/10
Set against the backdrop of the succession of Queen Elizabeth I, and the Essex Rebellion against her, the story advances the theory that it was in fact Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford who penned Shakespeare's plays.
An Inspector Calls
7.6/10
Northern England, 1912. The dinner of a wealthy family is interrupted by Inspector Goole, who only announces that a young woman has committed suicide. Then, he simply asks everyone present, one by one, if they knew her.
Gangster No. 1
6.7/10
An old gangster is advised that Freddie Mays would leave jail after thirty years in prison. His mood changes and he recalls when he was a young punk and who joined Freddie's gang—a man he both envied and ultimately betrayed.
The Trial
6/10
Joseph K. awakes one morning, to find two strange men in his room, telling him he has been arrested. Joseph is not told what he is charged with, and despite being "arrested," is allowed to remain free and go to work. But despite the strange nature of his arrest, Joseph soon learns that his trial, however odd, is very real, and tries desperately to spare himself from the court's judgement.
Afraid of the Dark
5.8/10
A little boy, obsessed with blindness and violence, slowly gets trapped in his own delusions.
American Perfekt
5.9/10
Criminal psychiatrist, Jake Nyman is taking a much needed vacation from responsibility. An experimental road trip during which ever decision will be made on a flip of a coin. Meanwhile, Sandra Thomas, disenchanted professional, is en route to pick up her flunked out sister, Alice, at a cheap motel before continuing on to visit their ailing mother. After being forced off the road by a mysterious assailant, however, Sandra is picked up by Jake, who's coin flipping amoral attitude quickly excites her own desire to break a few rules. Or worse. Jake and Sandra's romance is soon driven by chance acts of crime and kindness, all governed by the flip of a coin - at least until Sandra mysteriously disappears and Jake unwittingly picks up her suspicious sister, Alice ...
