Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Derek Roberts appears in 8 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Derek. One Night in Miami... is the clearest case: a film rated 6.8 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 comedy, horror, thriller. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Jessica Yu, Rebecca Hall, Regina King and others, Derek Roberts 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.
One Night in Miami... (2020) as Jerome X · Quiz Lady (2023) as Doctor · Passing (2021) as Guest
Career snapshot
A Nutevio catalogue profile for Derek Roberts.
Films in Nutevio
8
2016–2023
Career length
7 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.8
One Night in Miami...
Average Nutevio score
6.3
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.0
One Night in Miami...
Most frequent director
Jessica Yu
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Jessica Yu
Most common genre
Action
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 44m
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
2020s
6.4 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Quiz Lady, Black as Night, Passing — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
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
2020s
6.4
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2010s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Geostorm, Allegiant, Term Life.
Most productive era
2010s
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 | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.21 film | 6.52 films |
| Action | 6.24 films | — |
| Thriller | 6.32 films | 5.91 film |
| Comedy | — | 6.61 film |
| Horror | — | 5.91 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2016Allegiant
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Most Scared Factionless.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
6.8 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
2023Quiz Lady
The current state of the argument, as Doctor.
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.
8 of 8 films
as Steven
Directed by Unknown
as Major Collner
Directed by Dean Devlin
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
Jerome X
One Night in Miami... (2020)
Performance score6.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Jerome X gives Derek Roberts a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Doctor
Quiz Lady (2023)
Performance score6.6
Quiz Lady asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Doctor is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Steven
Black as Night (2021)
Performance score6.5
Black as Night asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Steven is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Guest
Passing (2021)
Performance score6.5
Passing asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Guest 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 Jerome X
Start here. One Night in Miami... is the clearest statement of what Derek Roberts does — accessible, 114 minutes, and rated 6.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Derek 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.
Geostorm (2017)
A deliberate change of key after One Night in Miami... — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Black as Night (2021)
Keeps the thriller register of Geostorm but asks for a colder reading of it.
Passing (2021)
A deliberate change of key after Black as Night — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Quiz Lady (2023)
A deliberate change of key after Passing — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
J Blakeson
Director
1 film together
Notably The 5th Wave
Peter Billingsley
Director
1 film together
Notably Term Life
Robert Schwentke
Director
1 film together
Notably Allegiant
Dean Devlin
Director
1 film together
Notably Geostorm
Regina King
Director
1 film together
Notably One Night in Miami...
Rebecca Hall
Director
1 film together
Notably Passing
Jessica Yu
Director
1 film together
Notably Quiz Lady
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Regina King
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
One Night in Miami...Jessica Yu
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Quiz LadyRebecca Hall
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
PassingDean Devlin
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
GeostormRobert Schwentke
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
AllegiantPeter Billingsley
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Term LifeJ Blakeson
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The 5th WaveSix 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
One Night in Miami...
as Jerome X
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
One Night in Miami...
as Jerome X
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
One Night in Miami...
as Jerome X
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Allegiant
as Most Scared Factionless
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
One Night in Miami...
as Jerome X
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. Derek Roberts 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.
Action Legend
Awarded
4 catalogue titles in action, 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
One Night in Miami...
as Jerome X
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Allegiant
as Most Scared Factionless
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
One Night in Miami...
as Jerome X
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Term Life
as Marcus
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Allegiant
as Most Scared Factionless
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Allegiant
as Most Scared Factionless
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
One Night in Miami...
as Jerome X
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Black as Night
as Steven
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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