Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#60167
of 909177 performers
Top 10%
David Crosby represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 51 years in, and David is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
David Crosby appears in 5 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without David. Woodstock is the clearest case: a film rated 7.1 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, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Barak Goodman, Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard and others, David Crosby 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.
Woodstock (1970) as Self - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young · Hook (1991) as Tickles · Monterey Pop (1968) as Self (uncredited)
Career snapshot
Ranked #60167 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
5
1968–2019
Career length
51 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.1
Woodstock
Average Nutevio score
6.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.5
Woodstock
Most frequent director
Barak Goodman
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Barak Goodman
Most common genre
Music
3 titles
Average runtime
2h 18m
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
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
7.1 average MV
The 1970s are where the work and the material meet. Woodstock — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1970s
7.1
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1970s
7.5
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. Monterey Pop.
Most productive era
1990s
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 | 1960s | 1970s | 1990s | 2010s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | — | 6.71 film | — |
| Action | — | — | 6.71 film | — |
| Thriller | — | — | 6.71 film | — |
| Comedy | — | — | 6.91 film | — |
| Crime | — | — | 6.71 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1968Monterey Pop
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Self (uncredited).
Highest rated performance
1970Woodstock
7.1 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak · Most recent film
2019Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation
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.
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 Self - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Directed by Michael Wadleigh
as Tickles
Directed by Steven Spielberg
as Self (uncredited)
Directed by D. A. Pennebaker
as '70s Hippie
Directed by Ron Howard
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
Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation (2019)
Performance score7.1
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Self gives David Crosby a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Self - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Woodstock (1970)
Performance score7.0
Woodstock asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Tickles
Hook (1991)
Performance score6.8
Hook asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Tickles is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Self (uncredited)
Monterey Pop (1968)
Performance score6.7
Monterey Pop asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self (uncredited) 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. Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation is the clearest statement of what David Crosby does — accessible, 106 minutes, and rated 6.7 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet David 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.
Monterey Pop (1968)
Keeps the music register of Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation but asks for a colder reading of it.
Woodstock (1970)
Keeps the music register of Monterey Pop but asks for a colder reading of it.
Hook (1991)
A deliberate change of key after Woodstock — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Backdraft (1991)
A deliberate change of key after Hook — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
D. A. Pennebaker
Director
1 film together
Notably Monterey Pop
Michael Wadleigh
Director
1 film together
Notably Woodstock
Ron Howard
Director
1 film together
Notably Backdraft
Steven Spielberg
Director
1 film together
Notably Hook
Barak Goodman
Director
1 film together
Notably Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Michael Wadleigh
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
WoodstockSteven Spielberg
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
HookD. A. Pennebaker
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Monterey PopBarak Goodman
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a GenerationRon Howard
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BackdraftSix 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
Hook
as Tickles
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Hook
as Tickles
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Woodstock
as Self - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Hook
as Tickles
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation
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. David Crosby 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
51 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Music Legend
Awarded
3 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
Hook
as Tickles
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Backdraft
as '70s Hippie
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Hook
as Tickles
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Hook
as Tickles
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Backdraft
as '70s Hippie
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Backdraft
as '70s Hippie
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Hook
as Tickles
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Hook
as Tickles
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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