Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#90386
of 909177 performers
Top 10%
Duke Ellington represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 81 years in, and Duke is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Duke Ellington appears in 5 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Duke. The Green Book: Guide to Freedom is the clearest case: a film rated 7.8 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 music, history, documentary. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Yoruba Richen, Otto Preminger, Vincente Minnelli, Duke Ellington 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.
The Green Book: Guide to Freedom (2019) as Self - Musician (archive footage) · Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat (2024) as Self (archive footage) · Anatomy of a Murder (1959) as Pie Eye (uncredited)
Career snapshot
Ranked #90386 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
5
1943–2024
Career length
81 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.8
The Green Book: Guide to Freedom
Average Nutevio score
7.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.8
The Green Book: Guide to Freedom
Most frequent director
Yoruba Richen
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Yoruba Richen
Most common genre
Documentary
3 titles
Average runtime
1h 52m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.1
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
7.3
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
2020s
7.7 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
7.7
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1950s
7.8
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1940s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Cabin in the Sky.
Most productive era
2010s
2 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 | 1940s | 1950s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 7.51 film | — | — |
| Comedy | 6.41 film | — | — | — |
| Crime | — | 7.51 film | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1943Cabin in the Sky
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Duke Ellington (uncredited).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2019The Green Book: Guide to Freedom
7.8 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
2024Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat
The current state of the argument, as Self (archive footage).
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.
5 of 5 films
as Self - Musician (archive footage)
Directed by Yoruba Richen
as Self (archive footage)
Directed by Unknown
as Pie Eye (uncredited)
Directed by Otto Preminger
as Self (archive footage)
Directed by Unknown
as Duke Ellington (uncredited)
Directed by Vincente Minnelli
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 - Musician (archive footage)
The Green Book: Guide to Freedom (2019)
Performance score7.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Self - Musician (archive footage) gives Duke Ellington a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Self (archive footage)
Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat (2024)
Performance score7.5
Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat 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 movie#3
Pie Eye (uncredited)
Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
Performance score7.3
Anatomy of a Murder asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Pie Eye (uncredited) 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)
The Apollo (2019)
Performance score6.5
The Apollo 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 - Musician (archive footage)
Start here. The Green Book: Guide to Freedom is the clearest statement of what Duke Ellington does — accessible, 52 minutes, and rated 7.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Duke 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.
Cabin in the Sky (1943)
A deliberate change of key after The Green Book: Guide to Freedom — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
A deliberate change of key after Cabin in the Sky — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Apollo (2019)
A deliberate change of key after Anatomy of a Murder — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat (2024)
Same director as The Apollo, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Yoruba Richen
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Green Book: Guide to FreedomOtto Preminger
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Anatomy of a MurderVincente Minnelli
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Cabin in the SkySix 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
Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat
as Self (archive footage)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat
as Self (archive footage)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Anatomy of a Murder
as Pie Eye (uncredited)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Cabin in the Sky
as Duke Ellington (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Green Book: Guide to Freedom
as Self - Musician (archive footage)
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. Duke Ellington 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
81 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
3 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
Anatomy of a Murder
as Pie Eye (uncredited)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Anatomy of a Murder
as Pie Eye (uncredited)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat
as Self (archive footage)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Anatomy of a Murder
as Pie Eye (uncredited)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Green Book: Guide to Freedom
as Self - Musician (archive footage)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat
as Self (archive footage)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat
as Self (archive footage)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Apollo
as Self (archive footage)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Reference
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