Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#70220
of 909177 performers
Top 10%
Jon Kenny works on transformation 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.
Jon Kenny appears in 4 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Jon. Wolfwalkers 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 transformation, quiet performance, versatility. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for comedy, drama, fantasy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Martin McDonagh, Tomm Moore, Bille August, Jon Kenny 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.
Wolfwalkers (2020) as Stringy Woodcutter, Ned (voice) · Song of the Sea (2014) as Ferry Dan / The Great Seanachaí (voice) · The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) as Gerry
Career snapshot
Ranked #70220 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
4
1998–2022
Career length
24 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.8
Wolfwalkers
Average Nutevio score
7.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.2
Wolfwalkers
Most frequent director
Tomm Moore
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Tomm Moore
Most common genre
Drama
2 titles
Average runtime
1h 51m
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
6.9
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
7.7 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Song of the Sea — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
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
2010s
8.0
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. Les Misérables.
Most productive era
2020s
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 | 1990s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.01 film | — | 7.51 film |
| Comedy | — | — | 7.51 film |
| Crime | 7.01 film | — | — |
| Romance | 7.01 film | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1998Les Misérables
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Thénardier.
Career peak
2014Song of the Sea
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
2020Wolfwalkers
7.8 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
The current state of the argument, as Gerry.
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.
4 of 4 films
as Ferry Dan / The Great Seanachaí (voice)
Directed by Tomm Moore
as Stringy Woodcutter, Ned (voice)
Directed by Tomm Moore
as Thénardier
Directed by Bille August
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
Ferry Dan / The Great Seanachaí (voice)
Song of the Sea (2014)
Performance score7.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Ferry Dan / The Great Seanachaí (voice) gives Jon Kenny a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Stringy Woodcutter, Ned (voice)
Wolfwalkers (2020)
Performance score7.6
Wolfwalkers asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Stringy Woodcutter, Ned (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Gerry
The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
Performance score7.3
The Banshees of Inisherin asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Gerry is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Thénardier
Les Misérables (1998)
Performance score6.9
Les Misérables asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Thénardier 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 Ferry Dan / The Great Seanachaí (voice)
Start here. Song of the Sea is the clearest statement of what Jon Kenny does — accessible, 94 minutes, and rated 7.7 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.
Les Misérables (1998)
A deliberate change of key after Song of the Sea — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Wolfwalkers (2020)
A deliberate change of key after Les Misérables — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
A deliberate change of key after Wolfwalkers — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
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.
Tomm Moore
Director
2 films together · 7.8 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
WolfwalkersMartin McDonagh
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Banshees of InisherinBille August
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Les MisérablesSix 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
Wolfwalkers
as Stringy Woodcutter, Ned (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
Wolfwalkers
as Stringy Woodcutter, Ned (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
Wolfwalkers
as Stringy Woodcutter, Ned (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Banshees of Inisherin
as Gerry
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Song of the Sea
as Ferry Dan / The Great Seanachaí (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. Jon Kenny 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
24 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
2 catalogue titles in drama, 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
Wolfwalkers
as Stringy Woodcutter, Ned (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Wolfwalkers
as Stringy Woodcutter, Ned (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Wolfwalkers
as Stringy Woodcutter, Ned (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Song of the Sea
as Ferry Dan / The Great Seanachaí (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Wolfwalkers
as Stringy Woodcutter, Ned (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Wolfwalkers
as Stringy Woodcutter, Ned (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Wolfwalkers
as Stringy Woodcutter, Ned (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Banshees of Inisherin
as Gerry
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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 drama
Harvey Keitel
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
Tom Wilkinson
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Have your say
Community
Which Jon Kenny 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
