Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#13930
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Isaac C. Singleton, Jr. represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 27 years in, and Isaac is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Isaac C. Singleton, Jr. appears in 11 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Isaac. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl is the clearest case: a film rated 8.1 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, physical performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for western, crime, thriller. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Josh Cooley, Gabriel Sabloff, Tim Miller and others, Isaac C. Singleton, Jr. 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.
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) as Bo'sun · Deadpool (2016) as Boothe · Transformers One (2024) as Darkwing (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #13930 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
11
1999–2026
Career length
27 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.1
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Average Nutevio score
5.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.0
Transformers One
Most frequent director
Josh Cooley
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Josh Cooley
Most common genre
Adventure
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 48m
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
7.9 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Deadpool — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.9
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
7.6
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. Galaxy Quest.
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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Action | — | 6.63 films | 7.91 film | 5.72 films |
| Thriller | — | 5.81 film | — | 2.62 films |
| Comedy | 7.11 film | 6.12 films | 7.91 film | — |
| Crime | — | — | — | 0.01 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1999Galaxy Quest
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Sarris' Guard.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2003Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
8.1 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 Brighton.
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.
11 of 11 films
as Bo'sun
Directed by Gore Verbinski
as Boothe
Directed by Tim Miller
as Darkwing (voice)
Directed by Josh Cooley
as Sarris' Guard
Directed by Dean Parisot
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
Bo'sun
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Bo'sun gives Isaac C. Singleton, Jr. a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Boothe
Deadpool (2016)
Performance score7.7
Deadpool asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Boothe is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Darkwing (voice)
Transformers One (2024)
Performance score7.6
Transformers One asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Darkwing (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Sarris' Guard
Galaxy Quest (1999)
Performance score7.0
Galaxy Quest asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Sarris' Guard 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 Bo'sun
Start here. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl is the clearest statement of what Isaac C. Singleton, Jr. does — accessible, 143 minutes, and rated 8.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Isaac 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.
Galaxy Quest (1999)
Keeps the adventure register of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl but asks for a colder reading of it.
Deadpool (2016)
Keeps the comedy register of Galaxy Quest but asks for a colder reading of it.
Transformers One (2024)
Keeps the adventure register of Deadpool but asks for a colder reading of it.
Bad Men Must Bleed (2026)
A deliberate change of key after Transformers One — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Dean Parisot
Director
1 film together
Notably Galaxy Quest
McG
Director
1 film together
Notably Charlie's Angels
Tim Burton
Director
1 film together
Notably Planet of the Apes
Peter Segal
Director
1 film together
Notably Anger Management
Gore Verbinski
Director
1 film together
Notably Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Tim Miller
Director
1 film together
Notably Deadpool
Gabriel Sabloff
Director
1 film together
Notably Beckman
Josh Cooley
Director
1 film together
Notably Transformers One
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Gore Verbinski
Director
1 film together · 8.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black PearlTim Miller
Director
1 film together · 7.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
DeadpoolJosh Cooley
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Transformers OneDean Parisot
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Galaxy QuestPeter Segal
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Anger ManagementGabriel Sabloff
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BeckmanMcG
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Charlie's AngelsTim Burton
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Planet of the ApesSix 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
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
as Bo'sun
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Transformers One
as Darkwing (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
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
as Bo'sun
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Charlie's Angels
as Kidnapper
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
as Bo'sun
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. Isaac C. Singleton, Jr. 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
27 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.
Adventure Legend
Awarded
7 catalogue titles in adventure, 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
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
as Bo'sun
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
as Bo'sun
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Transformers One
as Darkwing (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Dante's Inferni
as Speaker – 8th Circle: The Flatterers
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
as Bo'sun
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Deadpool
as Boothe
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Deadpool
as Boothe
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Deadpool
as Boothe
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 thriller
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 fantasy
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Jamie Harris
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and fantasy
Have your say
Community
Which Isaac C. Singleton, Jr. performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
Join the conversation
Reference
Continue exploring
Trending performers
Directors they work with
Collections to read next
