Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3640
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Lavell Crawford 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.
Lavell Crawford appears in 12 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Lavell. Home Team is the clearest case: a film rated 6.6 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, horror, animation. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Kyle Newacheck, Beth McCarthy-Miller, Jason Shwartz and others, Lavell Crawford 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.
Home Team (2022) as Gus the Bus Driver · Happy Gilmore 2 (2025) as Slim Peterson · On the Count of Three (2022) as Donny
Career snapshot
Ranked #3640 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
12
2015–2025
Career length
10 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.6
Home Team
Average Nutevio score
5.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
6.6
Home Team
Most frequent director
Kyle Newacheck
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Kyle Newacheck
Most common genre
Comedy
10 titles
Average runtime
1h 35m
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
5.8 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, American Ultra, The Ridiculous 6 — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
5.8
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
5.8
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. Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, American Ultra, The Ridiculous 6.
Most productive era
2020s
9 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 | — | 6.52 films |
| Action | 5.72 films | — |
| Comedy | 5.83 films | 5.37 films |
| Crime | — | 6.51 film |
| Horror | — | 5.23 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2015American Ultra
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Big Harold.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2022Home Team
6.6 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.
Most recent film
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.
12 of 12 films
as Donny
Directed by Jerrod Carmichael
as Slim Peterson
Directed by Kyle Newacheck
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
Gus the Bus Driver
Home Team (2022)
Performance score6.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Gus the Bus Driver gives Lavell Crawford a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Donny
On the Count of Three (2022)
Performance score6.7
On the Count of Three asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Donny is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Slim Peterson
Happy Gilmore 2 (2025)
Performance score6.5
Happy Gilmore 2 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Slim Peterson is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Willy
Freak (2025)
Performance score6.5
Freak asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Willy 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 Gus the Bus Driver
Start here. Home Team is the clearest statement of what Lavell Crawford does — accessible, 95 minutes, and rated 6.6 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Lavell 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.
On the Count of Three (2022)
Keeps the comedy register of Home Team but asks for a colder reading of it.
Happy Gilmore 2 (2025)
Keeps the comedy register of On the Count of Three but asks for a colder reading of it.
Freak (2025)
Keeps the comedy register of Happy Gilmore 2 but asks for a colder reading of it.
Netflix Tudum 2025 (2025)
A deliberate change of key after Freak — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Frank Coraci
Director
1 film together
Notably The Ridiculous 6
Nima Nourizadeh
Director
1 film together
Notably American Ultra
Jake Szymanski
Director
1 film together
Notably Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates
Steven Brill
Director
1 film together
Notably Hubie Halloween
Director X.
Director
1 film together
Notably Horror Noire
Dave Willis
Director
1 film together
Notably Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm
Jerrod Carmichael
Director
1 film together
Notably On the Count of Three
Jason Shwartz
Director
1 film together
Notably Pastacolypse
Beth McCarthy-Miller
Director
1 film together
Notably Netflix Tudum 2025
Kyle Newacheck
Director
1 film together
Notably Happy Gilmore 2
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Kyle Newacheck
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Happy Gilmore 2Jerrod Carmichael
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
On the Count of ThreeDave Willis
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Aqua Teen Forever: PlantasmJake Szymanski
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mike and Dave Need Wedding DatesNima Nourizadeh
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
American UltraSteven Brill
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hubie HalloweenBeth McCarthy-Miller
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Netflix Tudum 2025Jason Shwartz
Director
1 film together · 5.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
PastacolypseFrank Coraci
Director
1 film together · 5.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Ridiculous 6Director X.
Director
1 film together · 4.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Horror NoireSix 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
Happy Gilmore 2
as Slim Peterson
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Home Team
as Gus the Bus Driver
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Home Team
as Gus the Bus Driver
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Netflix Tudum 2025
as Self
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Home Team
as Gus the Bus Driver
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. Lavell Crawford 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
10 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
Hubie Halloween
as Farmer Dan
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Hubie Halloween
as Farmer Dan
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Home Team
as Gus the Bus Driver
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Hubie Halloween
as Farmer Dan
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
American Ultra
as Big Harold
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Ridiculous 6
as Gus Patch
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
On the Count of Three
as Donny
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates
as Keith
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Michael Caine
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
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Harvey Keitel
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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