Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#8952
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
DeRay Davis works on versatility 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.
DeRay Davis appears in 13 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without DeRay. 21 Jump Street is the clearest case: a film rated 6.9 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 crime, drama, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Bruce Leddy, Benny Boom, Jon M. Chu and others, DeRay Davis 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.
21 Jump Street (2012) as Domingo · All Eyez on Me (2017) as Legs · Barbershop (2002) as Hustle Guy
Career snapshot
Ranked #8952 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
13
2002–2021
Career length
19 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.9
21 Jump Street
Average Nutevio score
5.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
6.9
21 Jump Street
Most frequent director
Bruce Leddy
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Bruce Leddy
Most common genre
Comedy
10 titles
Average runtime
1h 38m
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
6.2
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
6.4 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. How High 2, All Eyez on Me, G.I. Joe: Retaliation — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.4
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.4
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. Imagine That, Old Dogs, Semi-Pro.
Most productive era
2000s
8 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 | 6.51 film | 6.71 film | 4.91 film |
| Action | 5.21 film | 6.32 films | — |
| Thriller | — | 5.71 film | — |
| Comedy | 5.78 films | 6.62 films | — |
| Crime | 5.21 film | 6.91 film | 4.91 film |
| Romance | 5.51 film | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2002Barbershop
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Hustle Guy.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
201221 Jump Street
6.9 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
2021Gully
The current state of the argument, as Calvin's Father.
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.
13 of 13 films
as Domingo
Directed by Phil Lord
as Legs
Directed by Benny Boom
as Big Bang
Directed by Bruce Leddy
as Stoop
Directed by Jon M. Chu
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
Domingo
21 Jump Street (2012)
Performance score7.1
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Domingo gives DeRay Davis a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Legs
All Eyez on Me (2017)
Performance score6.6
All Eyez on Me asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Legs is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Calvin's Father
Gully (2021)
Performance score6.5
Gully asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Calvin's Father is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Big Bang
How High 2 (2019)
Performance score6.5
How High 2 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Big Bang 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 Domingo
Start here. 21 Jump Street is the clearest statement of what DeRay Davis does — accessible, 109 minutes, and rated 6.9 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet DeRay 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.
G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013)
Keeps the action register of 21 Jump Street but asks for a colder reading of it.
All Eyez on Me (2017)
A deliberate change of key after G.I. Joe: Retaliation — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
How High 2 (2019)
A deliberate change of key after All Eyez on Me — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Gully (2021)
A deliberate change of key after How High 2 — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Tim Story
Director
1 film together
Notably Barbershop
Todd Phillips
Director
1 film together
Notably School for Scoundrels
David Zucker
Director
1 film together
Notably Scary Movie 4
Ken Kwapis
Director
1 film together
Notably License to Wed
Les Mayfield
Director
1 film together
Notably Code Name: The Cleaner
Karey Kirkpatrick
Director
1 film together
Notably Imagine That
Phil Lord
Director
1 film together
Notably 21 Jump Street
Jon M. Chu
Director
1 film together
Notably G.I. Joe: Retaliation
Benny Boom
Director
1 film together
Notably All Eyez on Me
Bruce Leddy
Director
1 film together
Notably How High 2
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Phil Lord
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
21 Jump StreetBenny Boom
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
All Eyez on MeTim Story
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BarbershopBruce Leddy
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
How High 2Karey Kirkpatrick
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Imagine ThatJon M. Chu
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
G.I. Joe: RetaliationKen Kwapis
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
License to WedDavid Zucker
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Scary Movie 4Todd Phillips
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
School for ScoundrelsLes Mayfield
Director
1 film together · 5.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Code Name: The CleanerSix 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
21 Jump Street
as Domingo
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
All Eyez on Me
as Legs
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
21 Jump Street
as Domingo
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Old Dogs
as Zoo Security Guard
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
21 Jump Street
as Domingo
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. DeRay Davis 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.
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
10 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
21 Jump Street
as Domingo
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
21 Jump Street
as Domingo
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
All Eyez on Me
as Legs
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Imagine That
as John Strother
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
21 Jump Street
as Domingo
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
G.I. Joe: Retaliation
as Stoop
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
All Eyez on Me
as Legs
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Code Name: The Cleaner
as Ronnie
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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