Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#18084
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Neil Young represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 56 years in, and Neil is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Neil Young appears in 7 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Neil. Barn is the clearest case: a film rated 9.0 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, emotional range, screen presence. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for music, documentary, horror. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Daryl Hannah, Barak Goodman, Ben Turner and others, Neil Young 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.
Barn (2021) · Hitsville: The Making of Motown (2019) as Self · Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation (2019) as Self
Career snapshot
Ranked #18084 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
7
1970–2026
Career length
56 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
9.0
Barn
Average Nutevio score
5.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
9.0
Barn
Most frequent director
Daryl Hannah
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Daryl Hannah
Most common genre
Music
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 51m
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
6.8
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
7.4 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation, Hitsville: The Making of Motown — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.4
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1970s
7.6
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1970s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Last Waltz, Woodstock.
Most productive era
2020s
3 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 | 1970s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Horror | — | — | 3.01 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1970Woodstock
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Self - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
First Nutevio masterpiece · Highest rated performance · Career peak
2021Barn
The first film here to clear 9.0 on our scale — a threshold fewer than one film in ten reaches. 9.0 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
2026Corduroy Plants
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.
7 of 7 films
Directed by Daryl Hannah
as Self
Directed by Martin Scorsese
as Self - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Directed by Michael Wadleigh
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
Barn
Barn (2021)
Performance score9.3
The performance the rest of the career is read through. The role gives Neil Young a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Self
Hitsville: The Making of Motown (2019)
Performance score7.4
Hitsville: The Making of Motown 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#3
Self
Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation (2019)
Performance score7.2
Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation 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 Last Waltz (1978)
Performance score7.1
The Last Waltz 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
Start here. Barn is the clearest statement of what Neil Young does — accessible, 73 minutes, and rated 9.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Neil 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.
Woodstock (1970)
Keeps the music register of Barn but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Last Waltz (1978)
Keeps the music register of Woodstock but asks for a colder reading of it.
Hitsville: The Making of Motown (2019)
Keeps the music register of The Last Waltz but asks for a colder reading of it.
Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation (2019)
Keeps the music register of Hitsville: The Making of Motown but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Daryl Hannah
Director
2 films together
Notably Barn
Michael Wadleigh
Director
1 film together
Notably Woodstock
Martin Scorsese
Director
1 film together
Notably The Last Waltz
Ben Turner
Director
1 film together
Notably Hitsville: The Making of Motown
Barak Goodman
Director
1 film together
Notably Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Daryl Hannah
Director
2 films together · 4.5 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
BarnBen Turner
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hitsville: The Making of MotownBarak Goodman
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a GenerationMartin Scorsese
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Last WaltzMichael Wadleigh
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
WoodstockSix 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
Barn
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Barn
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Barn
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Hitsville: The Making of Motown
as Self
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Barn
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. Neil Young 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
56 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
6 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
Barn
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Barn
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Barn
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Barn
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Barn
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Barn
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Barn
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Corduroy Plants
as Self
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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Works with the same directors — Martin Scorsese
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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