Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#13098
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Johnny Simmons works on versatility 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.
Johnny Simmons appears in 13 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Johnny. The Perks of Being a Wallflower 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 action, comedy, crime. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Kevin Pollak, Maggie Carey, Stephen Chbosky and others, Johnny Simmons 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 Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012) as Brad · Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) as Young Neil · Sing Sing (2024) as Unnamed Inmate
Career snapshot
Ranked #13098 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
13
2007–2025
Career length
18 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.8
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Average Nutevio score
6.3
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.8
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Most frequent director
Kevin Pollak
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Kevin Pollak
Most common genre
Comedy
8 titles
Average runtime
1h 44m
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
6.7 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. The Late Bloomer, The To Do List, The Perks of Being a Wallflower — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.7
Across 6 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.7
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. Hotel for Dogs, Jennifer's Body, The Greatest.
Most productive era
2010s
6 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 | 6.21 film | 6.63 films | 7.41 film |
| Action | 4.81 film | 7.22 films | 5.51 film |
| Thriller | 4.81 film | — | — |
| Comedy | 5.93 films | 6.44 films | 5.51 film |
| Crime | 4.81 film | 6.82 films | 5.51 film |
| Romance | — | 6.23 films | — |
| Horror | 6.01 film | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2007Evan Almighty
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Dylan Baxter.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2012The Perks of Being a Wallflower
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
2025Bad Man
The current state of the argument, as Deputy Sam Evans.
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.
13 of 13 films
as Young Neil
Directed by Edgar Wright
as Billiam Willingham
Directed by Phil Lord
as John Surratt
Directed by Robert Redford
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
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The defining work
#1
Brad
The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)
Performance score7.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Brad gives Johnny Simmons a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Young Neil
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)
Performance score7.3
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Young Neil is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Unnamed Inmate
Sing Sing (2024)
Performance score7.2
Sing Sing asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Unnamed Inmate is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Billiam Willingham
21 Jump Street (2012)
Performance score6.8
21 Jump Street asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Billiam Willingham 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 Brad
Start here. The Perks of Being a Wallflower is the clearest statement of what Johnny Simmons does — accessible, 103 minutes, and rated 7.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Johnny 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.
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)
A deliberate change of key after The Perks of Being a Wallflower — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Conspirator (2011)
A deliberate change of key after Scott Pilgrim vs. the World — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
21 Jump Street (2012)
Keeps the crime register of The Conspirator but asks for a colder reading of it.
Sing Sing (2024)
A deliberate change of key after 21 Jump Street — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Tom Shadyac
Director
1 film together
Notably Evan Almighty
Frank Miller
Director
1 film together
Notably The Spirit
Karyn Kusama
Director
1 film together
Notably Jennifer's Body
Thor Freudenthal
Director
1 film together
Notably Hotel for Dogs
Edgar Wright
Director
1 film together
Notably Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Robert Redford
Director
1 film together
Notably The Conspirator
Phil Lord
Director
1 film together
Notably 21 Jump Street
Stephen Chbosky
Director
1 film together
Notably The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Maggie Carey
Director
1 film together
Notably The To Do List
Kevin Pollak
Director
1 film together
Notably The Late Bloomer
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Stephen Chbosky
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 Perks of Being a WallflowerEdgar Wright
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Scott Pilgrim vs. the WorldPhil Lord
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
21 Jump StreetRobert Redford
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The ConspiratorThor Freudenthal
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hotel for DogsKaryn Kusama
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Jennifer's BodyMaggie Carey
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The To Do ListTom Shadyac
Director
1 film together · 5.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Evan AlmightyKevin Pollak
Director
1 film together · 5.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Late BloomerFrank Miller
Director
1 film together · 4.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The SpiritSix 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
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
as Brad
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
The Late Bloomer
as Dr. Peter Newmans
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
as Brad
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
21 Jump Street
as Billiam Willingham
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
as Brad
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. Johnny Simmons 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.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
8 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
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
as Brad
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
21 Jump Street
as Billiam Willingham
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Late Bloomer
as Dr. Peter Newmans
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Spirit
as Young Spirit
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
as Young Neil
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
21 Jump Street
as Billiam Willingham
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Late Bloomer
as Dr. Peter Newmans
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The To Do List
as Cameron
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: family and comedy
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and drama
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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