Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#8163
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Kayvan Novak 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.
Kayvan Novak appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Kayvan. Cruella 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, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for comedy, crime, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Craig Gillespie, Nick Murphy, Chris Morris and others, Kayvan Novak 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.
Cruella (2021) as Roger · Doctor Who: The Time of the Doctor (2013) as Handles (voice) · FX's A Christmas Carol (2019) as Ali Baba
Career snapshot
Ranked #8163 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
2005–2021
Career length
16 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.1
Cruella
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.1
Doctor Who: The Time of the Doctor
Most frequent director
Chris Morris
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Chris Morris
Most common genre
Comedy
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 47m
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
6.4
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
8.1 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Cruella — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
8.1
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
8.0
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. Syriana.
Most productive era
2010s
8 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 | 6.41 film | 7.23 films | 8.11 film |
| Action | — | 5.91 film | — |
| Thriller | 6.41 film | — | — |
| Comedy | — | 6.26 films | 8.11 film |
| Crime | — | 7.01 film | 8.11 film |
| Romance | — | 6.11 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2005Syriana
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Arash.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2021Cruella
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. The current state of the argument, as Roger.
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.
10 of 10 films
as Roger
Directed by Craig Gillespie
as Handles (voice)
Directed by Jamie Payne
as Waj
Directed by Chris Morris
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
Roger
Cruella (2021)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Roger gives Kayvan Novak a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Handles (voice)
Doctor Who: The Time of the Doctor (2013)
Performance score7.5
Doctor Who: The Time of the Doctor asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Handles (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Waj
Four Lions (2010)
Performance score7.4
Four Lions asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Waj is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Ali Baba
FX's A Christmas Carol (2019)
Performance score7.1
FX's A Christmas Carol asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Ali Baba 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 Roger
Start here. Cruella is the clearest statement of what Kayvan Novak does — accessible, 134 minutes, and rated 8.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Kayvan 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.
Four Lions (2010)
Keeps the comedy register of Cruella but asks for a colder reading of it.
Doctor Who: The Time of the Doctor (2013)
Keeps the drama register of Four Lions but asks for a colder reading of it.
FX's A Christmas Carol (2019)
Keeps the drama register of Doctor Who: The Time of the Doctor but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Day Shall Come (2019)
A deliberate change of key after FX's A Christmas Carol — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Chris Morris
Director
2 films together
Notably Four Lions
Stephen Gaghan
Director
1 film together
Notably Syriana
Peter Lord
Director
1 film together
Notably The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!
Jamie Payne
Director
1 film together
Notably Doctor Who: The Time of the Doctor
James Griffiths
Director
1 film together
Notably Cuban Fury
Nick Park
Director
1 film together
Notably Early Man
F. Gary Gray
Director
1 film together
Notably Men in Black: International
Nick Murphy
Director
1 film together
Notably FX's A Christmas Carol
Craig Gillespie
Director
1 film together
Notably Cruella
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Chris Morris
Director
2 films together · 6.3 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Four LionsCraig Gillespie
Director
1 film together · 8.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
CruellaJamie Payne
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Doctor Who: The Time of the DoctorNick Murphy
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
FX's A Christmas CarolPeter Lord
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!Stephen Gaghan
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SyrianaNick Park
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Early ManJames Griffiths
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Cuban FuryF. Gary Gray
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Men in Black: InternationalSix 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
Cruella
as Roger
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
FX's A Christmas Carol
as Ali Baba
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Cruella
as Roger
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!
as Additional Voices (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Cruella
as Roger
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. Kayvan Novak 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
7 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
Cruella
as Roger
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Cruella
as Roger
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
FX's A Christmas Carol
as Ali Baba
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
FX's A Christmas Carol
as Ali Baba
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Cruella
as Roger
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Men in Black: International
as Vungus / Nasr / Bassam
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Cruella
as Roger
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Cruella
as Roger
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
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Reference
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