Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#59226
of 909177 performers
Top 10%
Gracen Newton works on comedy 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.
Gracen Newton appears in 7 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Gracen. Dr. Seuss's The Sneetches 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 comedy, quiet performance, emotional range. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for family, animation, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Matt Danner, Luke Cormican, Swinton O. Scott III, Gracen Newton 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.
Dr. Seuss's The Sneetches (2025) as Petey (voice) · Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw (2025) as Manny (voice) · Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules (2022) as Manny (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #59226 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
7
2021–2025
Career length
4 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.9
Dr. Seuss's The Sneetches
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
6.9
Dr. Seuss's The Sneetches
Most frequent director
Luke Cormican
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Luke Cormican
Most common genre
Family
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 13m
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
6.5 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Dr. Seuss's The Sneetches, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw, Diary of a Wimpy Kid Christmas: Cabin Fever — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
6.5
Across 7 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
2020s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Dr. Seuss's The Sneetches, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw, Diary of a Wimpy Kid Christmas: Cabin Fever.
Most productive era
2020s
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 | 2020s |
|---|---|
| Comedy | 6.35 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Manny (voice).
Career peak
2022Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
6.9 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
2025Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw
The current state of the argument, as Manny (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.
7 of 7 films
as Manny (voice)
Directed by Matt Danner
as Manny (voice)
Directed by Luke Cormican
as Manny (voice)
Directed by Luke Cormican
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
Manny (voice)
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw (2025)
Performance score7.0
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Manny (voice) gives Gracen Newton a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Manny (voice)
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules (2022)
Performance score7.0
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Manny (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Petey (voice)
Dr. Seuss's The Sneetches (2025)
Performance score6.8
Dr. Seuss's The Sneetches asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Petey (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Young Rayburn (voice)
Rumble (2021)
Performance score6.7
Rumble asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Young Rayburn (voice) 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 Manny (voice)
Start here. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw is the clearest statement of what Gracen Newton does — accessible, 78 minutes, and rated 6.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Gracen 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.
Rumble (2021)
Keeps the family register of Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw but asks for a colder reading of it.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules (2022)
Keeps the family register of Rumble but asks for a colder reading of it.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid Christmas: Cabin Fever (2023)
Same director as Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Dr. Seuss's The Sneetches (2025)
Keeps the family register of Diary of a Wimpy Kid Christmas: Cabin Fever but asks for a colder reading of it.
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.
Luke Cormican
Director
2 films together · 6.8 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick RulesMatt Danner
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last StrawSwinton O. Scott III
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Diary of a Wimpy KidSix 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
Rumble
as Young Rayburn (voice)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Dr. Seuss's The Sneetches
as Petey (voice)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Dr. Seuss's The Sneetches
as Petey (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Rumble
as Young Rayburn (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw
as Manny (voice)
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. Gracen Newton 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.
Family Legend
Awarded
6 catalogue titles in family, 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
Dr. Seuss's The Sneetches
as Petey (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Dr. Seuss's The Sneetches
as Petey (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Dr. Seuss's The Sneetches
as Petey (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw
as Manny (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Dr. Seuss's The Sneetches
as Petey (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules
as Manny (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules
as Manny (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Diary of a Wimpy Kid
as Manny (voice)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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