Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#27021
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Cody Linley represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 26 years in, and Cody is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Cody Linley appears in 6 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Cody. Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special 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, documentary, action. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Sam Wrench, Shawn Levy, Donald Petrie and others, Cody Linley 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.
Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special (2026) as Self (archive footage) · Where the Heart Is (2000) as Brownie · My Dog Skip (2000) as Spit McGee
Career snapshot
Ranked #27021 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
6
2000–2026
Career length
26 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.2
Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special
Average Nutevio score
6.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.2
Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special
Most frequent director
Sam Wrench
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Sam Wrench
Most common genre
Comedy
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 35m
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
6.5
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
2020s
7.2 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
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
2020s
7.2
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2000s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Cheaper by the Dozen, Miss Congeniality, My Dog Skip.
Most productive era
2000s
4 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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.73 films | — | — |
| Action | 6.51 film | 4.71 film | — |
| Comedy | 6.74 films | 4.71 film | — |
| Crime | 6.51 film | — | — |
| Romance | 7.11 film | — | — |
| Horror | — | 4.71 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Tough Boy.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2026Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special
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. The current state of the argument, as Self (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.
6 of 6 films
as Self (archive footage)
Directed by Sam Wrench
as Brownie
Directed by Matt Williams
as Spit McGee
Directed by Unknown
as Matt Shepard
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 (archive footage)
Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special (2026)
Performance score7.1
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Self (archive footage) gives Cody Linley a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Brownie
Where the Heart Is (2000)
Performance score7.0
Where the Heart Is asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Brownie is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Spit McGee
My Dog Skip (2000)
Performance score6.6
My Dog Skip asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Spit McGee is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Matt Shepard
Sharknado 5: Global Swarming (2017)
Performance score6.5
Sharknado 5: Global Swarming asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Matt Shepard 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 (archive footage)
Start here. Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special is the clearest statement of what Cody Linley does — accessible, 59 minutes, and rated 7.2 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Cody 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.
Where the Heart Is (2000)
A deliberate change of key after Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
My Dog Skip (2000)
Keeps the comedy register of Where the Heart Is but asks for a colder reading of it.
Cheaper by the Dozen (2003)
Keeps the comedy register of My Dog Skip but asks for a colder reading of it.
Sharknado 5: Global Swarming (2017)
Keeps the comedy register of Cheaper by the Dozen but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Matt Williams
Director
1 film together
Notably Where the Heart Is
Donald Petrie
Director
1 film together
Notably Miss Congeniality
Shawn Levy
Director
1 film together
Notably Cheaper by the Dozen
Sam Wrench
Director
1 film together
Notably Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Sam Wrench
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary SpecialMatt Williams
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Where the Heart IsDonald Petrie
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Miss CongenialityShawn Levy
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Cheaper by the DozenSix 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
Where the Heart Is
as Brownie
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Where the Heart Is
as Brownie
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Where the Heart Is
as Brownie
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Where the Heart Is
as Brownie
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special
as Self (archive footage)
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. Cody Linley 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
26 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.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
5 catalogue titles in comedy, 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
Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special
as Self (archive footage)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Miss Congeniality
as Tough Boy
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Where the Heart Is
as Brownie
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Miss Congeniality
as Tough Boy
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Miss Congeniality
as Tough Boy
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Miss Congeniality
as Tough Boy
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Where the Heart Is
as Brownie
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Cheaper by the Dozen
as Quinn
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: drama and action
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and action
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Mark Ruffalo
Built a career in the same territory: crime and drama
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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