Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#6110
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Derek Russo 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.
Derek Russo appears in 15 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Derek. Bad Boys: Ride or Die is the clearest case: a film rated 7.3 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 action, science fiction, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Jake Kasdan, Bilall Fallah, Michael Houston King and others, Derek Russo 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.
Bad Boys: Ride or Die (2024) as Lintz · Red One (2024) as Yule Lad · Jumanji: The Next Level (2019) as Key Master
Career snapshot
Ranked #6110 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
15
2018–2025
Career length
7 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.3
Bad Boys: Ride or Die
Average Nutevio score
5.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
Bad Boys: Ride or Die
Most frequent director
Jake Kasdan
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Jake Kasdan
Most common genre
Action
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 40m
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
6.1
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
6.9 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Jumanji: The Next Level, The Mule — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.9
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.9
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. Jumanji: The Next Level, The Mule.
Most productive era
2020s
13 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 | 6.91 film | 4.82 films |
| Action | — | 5.77 films |
| Thriller | 6.91 film | 5.43 films |
| Comedy | 6.91 film | 6.65 films |
| Crime | 6.91 film | 5.73 films |
| Romance | — | 6.01 film |
| Horror | — | 5.73 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2018The Mule
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Big Dude.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
7.3 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
The current state of the argument, as Aleron Jacobs.
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.
15 of 15 films
as Yule Lad
Directed by Jake Kasdan
as Bubba Coggins
Directed by Michael Houston King
as Key Master
Directed by Jake Kasdan
as Big Dude
Directed by Clint Eastwood
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
Lintz
Bad Boys: Ride or Die (2024)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Lintz gives Derek Russo a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Yule Lad
Red One (2024)
Performance score7.0
Red One asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Yule Lad is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Bubba Coggins
Gator Lake (2024)
Performance score7.0
Gator Lake asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Bubba Coggins is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Key Master
Jumanji: The Next Level (2019)
Performance score6.8
Jumanji: The Next Level asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Key Master 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 Lintz
Start here. Bad Boys: Ride or Die is the clearest statement of what Derek Russo does — accessible, 116 minutes, and rated 7.3 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.
The Mule (2018)
Keeps the crime register of Bad Boys: Ride or Die but asks for a colder reading of it.
Jumanji: The Next Level (2019)
A deliberate change of key after The Mule — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Red One (2024)
Same director as Jumanji: The Next Level, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Gator Lake (2024)
Keeps the comedy register of Red One but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Jake Kasdan
Director
2 films together
Notably Red One
Clint Eastwood
Director
1 film together
Notably The Mule
Kevin Willmott
Director
1 film together
Notably The 24th
Jared Cohn
Director
1 film together
Notably Vendetta
Jaume Collet-Serra
Director
1 film together
Notably Black Adam
Tyler Spindel
Director
1 film together
Notably The Out-Laws
Robert Rodriguez
Director
1 film together
Notably Hypnotic
Graham Phillips
Director
1 film together
Notably Rumble Through the Dark
Michael Houston King
Director
1 film together
Notably Gator Lake
Bilall Fallah
Director
1 film together
Notably Bad Boys: Ride or Die
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Jake Kasdan
Director
2 films together · 7.0 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Red OneBilall Fallah
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Bad Boys: Ride or DieClint Eastwood
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The MuleJaume Collet-Serra
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Black AdamMichael Houston King
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Gator LakeGraham Phillips
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Rumble Through the DarkRobert Rodriguez
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
HypnoticJared Cohn
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
VendettaTyler Spindel
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Out-LawsKevin Willmott
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The 24thSix 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
Bad Boys: Ride or Die
as Lintz
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
The 24th
as Evans
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Bad Boys: Ride or Die
as Lintz
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Mule
as Big Dude
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Bad Boys: Ride or Die
as Lintz
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 Russo 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.
Action Legend
Awarded
7 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
Jumanji: The Next Level
as Key Master
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Bad Boys: Ride or Die
as Lintz
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The 24th
as Evans
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Hypnotic
as Tiny
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Red One
as Yule Lad
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Red One
as Yule Lad
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Mule
as Big Dude
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Red One
as Yule Lad
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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