Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#54380
of 909177 performers
Top 10%
DMX represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 25 years in, and DMX is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
DMX appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without DMX. In Whose Name? 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, quiet performance, transformation. 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 Julian Starks, Garret Price, Nas and others, DMX 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.
In Whose Name? (2025) as Self · Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage (2021) as Self (archive footage) · You're Watching Video Music Box (2021) as Self (archive footage)
Career snapshot
Ranked #54380 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
2000–2025
Career length
25 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.9
In Whose Name?
Average Nutevio score
5.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
6.9
In Whose Name?
Most frequent director
Andrzej Bartkowiak
3 films together
Longest collaboration
3×
With Andrzej Bartkowiak
Most common genre
Documentary
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 41m
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
6.3
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
6.2 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Pimp, Top Five — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.2
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.2
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. Cradle 2 the Grave, Exit Wounds, Romeo Must Die.
Most productive era
2020s
5 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 | 6.11 film | 6.22 films | — |
| Action | 6.13 films | — | 5.41 film |
| Thriller | 6.12 films | — | — |
| Comedy | — | 6.11 film | — |
| Crime | 6.13 films | — | — |
| Romance | — | 6.11 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2000Romeo Must Die
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Silk.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2025In Whose Name?
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. 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.
10 of 10 films
as Self
Directed by Unknown
as Anthony Fait
Directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak
as Self (archive footage)
Directed by Garret Price
as Self (archive footage)
Directed by Nas
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
In Whose Name? (2025)
Performance score6.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Self gives DMX a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Anthony Fait
Cradle 2 the Grave (2003)
Performance score6.6
Cradle 2 the Grave asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Anthony Fait is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Self
A Journey to Sundance (2023)
Performance score6.5
A Journey to Sundance asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Self (archive footage)
Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage (2021)
Performance score6.5
Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self (archive footage) 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. In Whose Name? is the clearest statement of what DMX does — accessible, 106 minutes, and rated 6.9 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet DMX 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.
Cradle 2 the Grave (2003)
A deliberate change of key after In Whose Name? — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage (2021)
A deliberate change of key after Cradle 2 the Grave — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
You're Watching Video Music Box (2021)
Keeps the music register of Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage but asks for a colder reading of it.
A Journey to Sundance (2023)
Keeps the documentary register of You're Watching Video Music Box but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Andrzej Bartkowiak
Director
3 films together
Notably Romeo Must Die
Chris Rock
Director
1 film together
Notably Top Five
Jared Cohn
Director
1 film together
Notably Fast and Fierce: Death Race
Nas
Director
1 film together
Notably You're Watching Video Music Box
Garret Price
Director
1 film together
Notably Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage
Julian Starks
Director
1 film together
Notably A Journey to Sundance
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Andrzej Bartkowiak
Director
3 films together · 6.1 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Romeo Must DieGarret Price
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and RageNas
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
You're Watching Video Music BoxChris Rock
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Top FiveJared Cohn
Director
1 film together · 5.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fast and Fierce: Death RaceJulian Starks
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Journey to SundanceSix 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
In Whose Name?
as Self
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Top Five
as DMX
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
In Whose Name?
as Self
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
In Whose Name?
as Self
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
In Whose Name?
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. DMX 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
25 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.
Documentary Legend
Awarded
4 catalogue titles in documentary, 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
In Whose Name?
as Self
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Romeo Must Die
as Silk
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Top Five
as DMX
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Exit Wounds
as Latrell Walker
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Romeo Must Die
as Silk
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Exit Wounds
as Latrell Walker
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Top Five
as DMX
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
In Whose Name?
as Self
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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