Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3756
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Jon Cryer represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 38 years in, and Jon is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Jon Cryer appears in 8 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Jon. Big Time Adolescence is the clearest case: a film rated 7.2 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 documentary, comedy, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Andrew McCarthy, Todd Phillips, Robert Rodriguez and others, Jon Cryer 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.
Big Time Adolescence (2020) as Reuben · Hot Shots! (1991) as Jim 'Wash Out' Pfaffenbach · Pretty in Pink (1986) as Philip F. 'Duckie' Dale
Career snapshot
Ranked #3756 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
8
1986–2024
Career length
38 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.2
Big Time Adolescence
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.2
Big Time Adolescence
Most frequent director
Andrew McCarthy
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Andrew McCarthy
Most common genre
Comedy
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 34m
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
6.6
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
6.6 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. BRATS, Big Time Adolescence — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
6.6
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
6.6
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1980s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, Pretty in Pink.
Most productive era
1980s
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 | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.71 film | 5.21 film | — | 6.41 film | 7.21 film |
| Action | 5.11 film | 6.71 film | — | — | — |
| Comedy | — | 6.02 films | 5.91 film | 6.41 film | 7.21 film |
| Romance | 6.71 film | — | — | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1986Pretty in Pink
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Philip F. 'Duckie' Dale.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
7.2 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
2024BRATS
The current state of the argument, as Self.
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.
8 of 8 films
as Philip F. 'Duckie' Dale
Directed by Howard Deutch
as Jim 'Wash Out' Pfaffenbach
Directed by Jim Abrahams
as Alan Harper
Directed by Todd Phillips
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
Reuben
Big Time Adolescence (2020)
Performance score7.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Reuben gives Jon Cryer a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Philip F. 'Duckie' Dale
Pretty in Pink (1986)
Performance score7.1
Pretty in Pink asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Philip F. 'Duckie' Dale is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Jim 'Wash Out' Pfaffenbach
Hot Shots! (1991)
Performance score6.9
Hot Shots! asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Jim 'Wash Out' Pfaffenbach is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Self
BRATS (2024)
Performance score6.5
BRATS asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self 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 Reuben
Start here. Big Time Adolescence is the clearest statement of what Jon Cryer does — accessible, 91 minutes, and rated 7.2 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Jon 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.
Pretty in Pink (1986)
Keeps the drama register of Big Time Adolescence but asks for a colder reading of it.
Hot Shots! (1991)
A deliberate change of key after Pretty in Pink — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Due Date (2010)
Keeps the comedy register of Hot Shots! but asks for a colder reading of it.
BRATS (2024)
A deliberate change of key after Due Date — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Howard Deutch
Director
1 film together
Notably Pretty in Pink
Sidney J. Furie
Director
1 film together
Notably Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
Jim Abrahams
Director
1 film together
Notably Hot Shots!
Stephen Herek
Director
1 film together
Notably Holy Man
Robert Rodriguez
Director
1 film together
Notably Shorts
Todd Phillips
Director
1 film together
Notably Due Date
Andrew McCarthy
Director
1 film together
Notably BRATS
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Jim Abrahams
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hot Shots!Howard Deutch
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Pretty in PinkTodd Phillips
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Due DateAndrew McCarthy
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BRATSRobert Rodriguez
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
ShortsStephen Herek
Director
1 film together · 5.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Holy ManSidney J. Furie
Director
1 film together · 5.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Superman IV: The Quest for PeaceSix 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
Big Time Adolescence
as Reuben
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Pretty in Pink
as Philip F. 'Duckie' Dale
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Big Time Adolescence
as Reuben
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Due Date
as Alan Harper
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Big Time Adolescence
as Reuben
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. Jon Cryer 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
38 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
5 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
Big Time Adolescence
as Reuben
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Big Time Adolescence
as Reuben
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Pretty in Pink
as Philip F. 'Duckie' Dale
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Due Date
as Alan Harper
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Big Time Adolescence
as Reuben
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
as Lenny
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Big Time Adolescence
as Reuben
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
as Lenny
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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