Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#25527
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Keith Richards represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 52 years in, and Keith is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Keith Richards appears in 6 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Keith. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End is the clearest case: a film rated 7.5 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, screen presence, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for music, documentary, action. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Rob Marshall, Gore Verbinski, Charlotte Zwerin and others, Keith Richards 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.
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007) as Captain Teague · One World: Together at Home (2020) as Self · Gimme Shelter (1970) as Self - The Rolling Stones Member
Career snapshot
Ranked #25527 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
6
1968–2020
Career length
52 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.5
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
Average Nutevio score
6.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
Gimme Shelter
Most frequent director
Rob Marshall
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Rob Marshall
Most common genre
Music
4 titles
Average runtime
3h 2m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.9
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
7.0
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
2000s
7.5 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
7.5
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1970s
7.3
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1960s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Sympathy for the Devil.
Most productive era
2010s
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 | 1960s | 1970s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Action | — | — | 7.51 film | 6.61 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Self.
Career peak
1970Gimme Shelter
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
2007Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
7.5 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
2020One World: Together at Home
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.
6 of 6 films
as Captain Teague
Directed by Gore Verbinski
as Self - The Rolling Stones Member
Directed by Charlotte Zwerin
as Self
Directed by Unknown
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
Captain Teague
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007)
Performance score7.3
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Captain Teague gives Keith Richards a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Self - The Rolling Stones Member
Gimme Shelter (1970)
Performance score7.3
Gimme Shelter asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self - The Rolling Stones Member is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Self
One World: Together at Home (2020)
Performance score7.0
One World: Together at Home 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 movie#4
Self
The Quiet One (2019)
Performance score7.0
The Quiet One 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 Captain Teague
Start here. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End is the clearest statement of what Keith Richards does — accessible, 169 minutes, and rated 7.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Keith 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.
Sympathy for the Devil (1968)
A deliberate change of key after Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Gimme Shelter (1970)
Keeps the music register of Sympathy for the Devil but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Quiet One (2019)
Keeps the music register of Gimme Shelter but asks for a colder reading of it.
One World: Together at Home (2020)
Same director as The Quiet One, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Jean-Luc Godard
Director
1 film together
Notably Sympathy for the Devil
Charlotte Zwerin
Director
1 film together
Notably Gimme Shelter
Gore Verbinski
Director
1 film together
Notably Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
Rob Marshall
Director
1 film together
Notably Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Gore Verbinski
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's EndCharlotte Zwerin
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Gimme ShelterRob Marshall
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger TidesJean-Luc Godard
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Sympathy for the DevilSix 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
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
as Captain Teague
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
One World: Together at Home
as Self
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
as Captain Teague
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
as Captain Teague
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
as Captain Teague
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. Keith Richards 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
52 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.
Music Legend
Awarded
4 catalogue titles in music, 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
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
as Captain Teague
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
as Captain Teague
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
One World: Together at Home
as Self
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
as Captain Teague
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
as Captain Teague
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
as Captain Teague
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
as Captain Teague
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
as Captain Teague
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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