Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#4843
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Donald Faison represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 31 years in, and Donald is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Donald Faison appears in 16 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Donald. Remember the Titans is the clearest case: a film rated 7.7 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, family, animation. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Mike Roberts, Kyle Newacheck, Eli Craig and others, Donald Faison 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.
Remember the Titans (2000) as Petey Jones · Twelve Monkeys (1995) as Psychiatric Prisoner (uncredited) · The Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode III (2010) as Gary the Stormtrooper / TIE Fighter Pilot (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #4843 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
16
1995–2026
Career length
31 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.7
Remember the Titans
Average Nutevio score
6.0
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.7
Remember the Titans
Most frequent director
Boaz Yakin
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Boaz Yakin
Most common genre
Comedy
11 titles
Average runtime
1h 32m
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
6.4
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
1990s
7.5 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Clueless, Twelve Monkeys — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
7.5
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
7.4
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1990s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Clueless, Twelve Monkeys.
Most productive era
2010s
7 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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 7.13 films | 6.51 film | 6.71 film |
| Action | — | — | 6.53 films | 6.71 film |
| Thriller | 7.71 film | — | — | — |
| Comedy | 7.31 film | 6.53 films | 6.15 films | 2.02 films |
| Crime | — | — | 6.41 film | — |
| Romance | 7.31 film | 6.51 film | — | — |
| Horror | — | — | 5.61 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1995Clueless
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Murray.
Highest rated performance
1995Twelve Monkeys
7.7 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2026Backyard Sports: The Animated Special
The current state of the argument, as Dante Robinson (voice).
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.
16 of 16 films
as Gary the Stormtrooper / TIE Fighter Pilot (voice)
Directed by Unknown
as Psychiatric Prisoner (uncredited)
Directed by Terry Gilliam
as Murray
Directed by Amy Heckerling
as Huey
Directed by Boaz Yakin
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
Petey Jones
Remember the Titans (2000)
Performance score7.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Petey Jones gives Donald Faison a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Gary the Stormtrooper / TIE Fighter Pilot (voice)
The Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode III (2010)
Performance score7.6
The Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode III asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Gary the Stormtrooper / TIE Fighter Pilot (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Psychiatric Prisoner (uncredited)
Twelve Monkeys (1995)
Performance score7.5
Twelve Monkeys asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Psychiatric Prisoner (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Murray
Clueless (1995)
Performance score7.4
Clueless asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Murray 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 Petey Jones
Start here. Remember the Titans is the clearest statement of what Donald Faison does — accessible, 113 minutes, and rated 7.7 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Donald 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.
Twelve Monkeys (1995)
A deliberate change of key after Remember the Titans — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Clueless (1995)
A deliberate change of key after Twelve Monkeys — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Uptown Girls (2003)
Keeps the comedy register of Clueless but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode III (2010)
Keeps the comedy register of Uptown Girls but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Boaz Yakin
Director
2 films together
Notably Remember the Titans
Terry Gilliam
Director
1 film together
Notably Twelve Monkeys
Amy Heckerling
Director
1 film together
Notably Clueless
Shawn Levy
Director
1 film together
Notably Big Fat Liar
Sanaa Hamri
Director
1 film together
Notably Something New
Jeff Wadlow
Director
1 film together
Notably Kick-Ass 2
Zach Braff
Director
1 film together
Notably Wish I Was Here
Scott Foley
Director
1 film together
Notably Let's Kill Ward's Wife
Eli Craig
Director
1 film together
Notably Little Evil
Kyle Newacheck
Director
1 film together
Notably Game Over, Man!
Mike Roberts
Director
1 film together
Notably Backyard Sports: The Animated Special
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Boaz Yakin
Director
2 films together · 7.3 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Remember the TitansTerry Gilliam
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Twelve MonkeysAmy Heckerling
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
CluelessZach Braff
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Wish I Was HereSanaa Hamri
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Something NewJeff Wadlow
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Kick-Ass 2Shawn Levy
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Big Fat LiarEli Craig
Director
1 film together · 5.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Little EvilKyle Newacheck
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Game Over, Man!Scott Foley
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Let's Kill Ward's WifeMike Roberts
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Backyard Sports: The Animated SpecialSix 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
Twelve Monkeys
as Psychiatric Prisoner (uncredited)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Something New
as Nelson McQueen
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Twelve Monkeys
as Psychiatric Prisoner (uncredited)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Twelve Monkeys
as Psychiatric Prisoner (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Remember the Titans
as Petey Jones
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. Donald Faison 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
31 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.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
11 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
Twelve Monkeys
as Psychiatric Prisoner (uncredited)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Twelve Monkeys
as Psychiatric Prisoner (uncredited)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Something New
as Nelson McQueen
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Twelve Monkeys
as Psychiatric Prisoner (uncredited)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode III
as Gary the Stormtrooper / TIE Fighter Pilot (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Kick-Ass 2
as Dr. Gravity
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode III
as Gary the Stormtrooper / TIE Fighter Pilot (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Twelve Monkeys
as Psychiatric Prisoner (uncredited)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Jamie Harris
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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