Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#35470
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Khris Davis 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.
Khris Davis appears in 8 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Khris. Atonement is the clearest case: a film rated 8.0 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 war, drama, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Matthew Diamond, George Tillman Jr., Malcolm D. Lee and others, Khris Davis 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.
Atonement (2026) as Leray · Big George Foreman (2023) as George Foreman · Judas and the Black Messiah (2021) as Steel
Career snapshot
Ranked #35470 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
8
2017–2026
Career length
9 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.0
Atonement
Average Nutevio score
6.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.0
Atonement
Most frequent director
Matthew Diamond
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Matthew Diamond
Most common genre
Drama
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 56m
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
7.1 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Atonement, Twelfth Night, Big George Foreman — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
7.1
Across 6 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
7.1
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. Summer Night, Detroit.
Most productive era
2020s
6 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.32 films | 7.24 films |
| Thriller | 7.21 film | — |
| Comedy | 5.31 film | 6.82 films |
| Romance | 5.31 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2017Detroit
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Blind Pig Patron.
Career peak
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance · Most recent film
2026Atonement
8.0 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. The current state of the argument, as Leray.
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 George Foreman
Directed by George Tillman Jr.
as Orsinio
Directed by Matthew Diamond
as Blind Pig Patron
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow
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
George Foreman
Big George Foreman (2023)
Performance score8.1
The performance the rest of the career is read through. George Foreman gives Khris Davis a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Leray
Atonement (2026)
Performance score7.8
Atonement asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Leray is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Steel
Judas and the Black Messiah (2021)
Performance score7.2
Judas and the Black Messiah asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Steel is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Orsinio
Twelfth Night (2025)
Performance score7.1
Twelfth Night asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Orsinio 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 George Foreman
Start here. Big George Foreman is the clearest statement of what Khris Davis does — accessible, 129 minutes, and rated 7.6 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Khris 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.
Detroit (2017)
Keeps the drama register of Big George Foreman but asks for a colder reading of it.
Judas and the Black Messiah (2021)
Keeps the drama register of Detroit but asks for a colder reading of it.
Twelfth Night (2025)
A deliberate change of key after Judas and the Black Messiah — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Atonement (2026)
A deliberate change of key after Twelfth Night — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Kathryn Bigelow
Director
1 film together
Notably Detroit
Joseph Cross
Director
1 film together
Notably Summer Night
Shaka King
Director
1 film together
Notably Judas and the Black Messiah
Malcolm D. Lee
Director
1 film together
Notably Space Jam: A New Legacy
George Tillman Jr.
Director
1 film together
Notably Big George Foreman
Matthew Diamond
Director
1 film together
Notably Twelfth Night
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
George Tillman Jr.
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Big George ForemanShaka King
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Judas and the Black MessiahKathryn Bigelow
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
DetroitMatthew Diamond
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Twelfth NightMalcolm D. Lee
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Space Jam: A New LegacyJoseph Cross
Director
1 film together · 5.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Summer NightSix 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
Atonement
as Leray
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Detroit
as Blind Pig Patron
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Atonement
as Leray
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Detroit
as Blind Pig Patron
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Big George Foreman
as George Foreman
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. Khris Davis 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
6 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
Atonement
as Leray
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Atonement
as Leray
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Summer Night
as Luke
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Detroit
as Blind Pig Patron
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Atonement
as Leray
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Space Jam: A New Legacy
as Malik
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Summer Night
as Luke
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Summer Night
as Luke
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
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Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Edward Norton
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
Tom Wilkinson
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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