Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#9317
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Michael Beasley 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.
Michael Beasley appears in 19 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Michael. The Great Debaters is the clearest case: a film rated 7.3 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, action, crime. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Akiva Schaffer, Jake Kasdan, Director X. and others, Michael Beasley 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.
The Great Debaters (2007) as Trudell · The Accountant (2016) as FBI Agent In Charge · The Nice Guys (2016) as Bartender at Car Show
Career snapshot
Ranked #9317 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
19
2007–2026
Career length
19 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.3
The Great Debaters
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
The Great Debaters
Most frequent director
Baltasar Kormákur
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Baltasar Kormákur
Most common genre
Comedy
10 titles
Average runtime
1h 52m
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
6.3
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
7.3 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. The Great Debaters — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
7.3
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
7.3
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. The Great Debaters.
Most productive era
2010s
13 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 | 7.31 film | 6.55 films | 6.71 film |
| Action | — | 6.55 films | 6.63 films |
| Thriller | — | 6.82 films | 6.82 films |
| Comedy | — | 6.57 films | 4.33 films |
| Crime | — | 6.76 films | 6.73 films |
| Romance | — | 6.41 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Trudell. 7.3 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 Coach Donovan.
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.
19 of 19 films
as FBI Agent In Charge
Directed by Gavin O'Connor
as Bartender at Car Show
Directed by Shane Black
as Coach Davis (uncredited)
Directed by Jake Kasdan
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
Trudell
The Great Debaters (2007)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Trudell gives Michael Beasley a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
FBI Agent In Charge
The Accountant (2016)
Performance score7.0
The Accountant asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. FBI Agent In Charge is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Bartender at Car Show
The Nice Guys (2016)
Performance score7.0
The Nice Guys asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Bartender at Car Show is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Joseph
1992 (2024)
Performance score6.8
1992 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Joseph 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 Trudell
Start here. The Great Debaters is the clearest statement of what Michael Beasley does — accessible, 126 minutes, and rated 7.3 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Michael 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.
The Accountant (2016)
Keeps the drama register of The Great Debaters but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Nice Guys (2016)
Keeps the crime register of The Accountant but asks for a colder reading of it.
Jumanji: The Next Level (2019)
Keeps the comedy register of The Nice Guys but asks for a colder reading of it.
1992 (2024)
A deliberate change of key after Jumanji: The Next Level — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Baltasar Kormákur
Director
2 films together
Notably 2 Guns
Denzel Washington
Director
1 film together
Notably The Great Debaters
Glenn Ficarra
Director
1 film together
Notably I Love You Phillip Morris
David Dobkin
Director
1 film together
Notably The Change-Up
Jon Hurwitz
Director
1 film together
Notably American Reunion
Robert Zemeckis
Director
1 film together
Notably Flight
J Blakeson
Director
1 film together
Notably The 5th Wave
Shane Black
Director
1 film together
Notably The Nice Guys
Gavin O'Connor
Director
1 film together
Notably The Accountant
Richie Keen
Director
1 film together
Notably Fist Fight
Director X.
Director
1 film together
Notably SuperFly
Jake Kasdan
Director
1 film together
Notably Jumanji: The Next Level
Akiva Schaffer
Director
1 film together
Notably The Naked Gun
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Baltasar Kormákur
Director
2 films together · 6.5 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
2 GunsDenzel Washington
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Great DebatersGavin O'Connor
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The AccountantShane Black
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Nice GuysJake Kasdan
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Jumanji: The Next LevelRobert Zemeckis
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
FlightDirector X.
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SuperFlyAkiva Schaffer
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Naked GunGlenn Ficarra
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
I Love You Phillip MorrisJon Hurwitz
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
American ReunionDavid Dobkin
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Change-UpRichie Keen
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fist FightJ Blakeson
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The 5th WaveSix 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
The Great Debaters
as Trudell
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
I Love You Phillip Morris
as Prison Guard
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
The Great Debaters
as Trudell
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Nice Guys
as Bartender at Car Show
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Great Debaters
as Trudell
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. Michael Beasley 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
Reptile
as Victor
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
1992
as Joseph
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
I Love You Phillip Morris
as Prison Guard
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Reptile
as Victor
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Nice Guys
as Bartender at Car Show
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The 5th Wave
as Major Bob
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
I Love You Phillip Morris
as Prison Guard
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Contraband
as Davis
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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Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Jamie Harris
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Elliot Page
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Christian Bale
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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