Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#29146
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Josh Ruben works on quiet performance 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.
Josh Ruben appears in 6 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Josh. Ugly Cry is the clearest case: a film rated 7.0 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, comedy, versatility. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for comedy, animation, horror. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Matt Braly, Emily Robinson, Josh Ruben and others, Josh Ruben 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.
Ugly Cry (2026) · Heart Eyes (2025) as Movie Goer · Plan B (2021) as Philip Peterson
Career snapshot
Ranked #29146 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
6
2019–2026
Career length
7 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.0
Ugly Cry
Average Nutevio score
5.3
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.0
Ugly Cry
Most frequent director
Josh Ruben
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Josh Ruben
Most common genre
Comedy
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 24m
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
6.1
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
6.2 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Greener Grass — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.2
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.2
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2010s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Greener Grass.
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 | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Thriller | — | 7.01 film |
| Comedy | 6.21 film | 5.15 films |
| Romance | — | 6.31 film |
| Horror | — | 6.43 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2019Greener Grass
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Swim Coach.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2026Ugly Cry
7.0 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. The current state of the argument.
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.
6 of 6 films
Directed by Emily Robinson
as Little Mouse / Additional Voices (voice)
Directed by Matt Braly
as Movie Goer
Directed by Josh Ruben
as Philip Peterson
Directed by Natalie Morales
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
Ugly Cry
Ugly Cry (2026)
Performance score6.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. The role gives Josh Ruben a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Little Mouse / Additional Voices (voice)
Crossed Animals (2026)
Performance score6.5
Crossed Animals asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Little Mouse / Additional Voices (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Movie Goer
Heart Eyes (2025)
Performance score6.5
Heart Eyes asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Movie Goer is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Philip Peterson
Plan B (2021)
Performance score6.5
Plan B asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Philip Peterson 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
Start here. Ugly Cry is the clearest statement of what Josh Ruben does — accessible, 94 minutes, and rated 7.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Josh 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.
Scare Me (2020)
Keeps the comedy register of Ugly Cry but asks for a colder reading of it.
Plan B (2021)
Keeps the comedy register of Scare Me but asks for a colder reading of it.
Heart Eyes (2025)
Keeps the comedy register of Plan B but asks for a colder reading of it.
Crossed Animals (2026)
Keeps the comedy register of Heart Eyes but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Josh Ruben
Director
2 films together
Notably Heart Eyes
Jocelyn DeBoer
Director
1 film together
Notably Greener Grass
Natalie Morales
Director
1 film together
Notably Plan B
Emily Robinson
Director
1 film together
Notably Ugly Cry
Matt Braly
Director
1 film together
Notably Crossed Animals
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Josh Ruben
Director
2 films together · 6.0 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Heart EyesEmily Robinson
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Ugly CryNatalie Morales
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Plan BJocelyn DeBoer
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Greener GrassMatt Braly
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Crossed AnimalsSix 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
Ugly Cry
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Heart Eyes
as Movie Goer
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Ugly Cry
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Heart Eyes
as Movie Goer
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Ugly Cry
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. Josh Ruben 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
6 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
Ugly Cry
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Ugly Cry
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Heart Eyes
as Movie Goer
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Ugly Cry
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Ugly Cry
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Ugly Cry
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Heart Eyes
as Movie Goer
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Heart Eyes
as Movie Goer
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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