Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#16376
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Noah Dalton Danby represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 25 years in, and Noah is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Noah Dalton Danby appears in 8 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Noah. My Spy is the clearest case: a film rated 6.9 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, action. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for action, comedy, family. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Peter Segal, David Twohy, Andrzej Bartkowiak and others, Noah Dalton Danby 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.
My Spy (2020) as Todd · Detroit Rock City (1999) as Chongo's Friend · My Spy The Eternal City (2024) as Todd
Career snapshot
Ranked #16376 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
8
1999–2024
Career length
25 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.9
My Spy
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
6.9
My Spy
Most frequent director
Peter Segal
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Peter Segal
Most common genre
Action
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 43m
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
1990s
6.7 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Detroit Rock City — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
6.7
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
6.8
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1990s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Detroit Rock City.
Most productive era
2010s
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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Action | — | 5.82 films | 6.03 films | 6.72 films |
| Thriller | — | 5.82 films | 6.41 film | — |
| Comedy | 6.71 film | 5.71 film | — | 6.72 films |
| Crime | — | 5.91 film | 5.61 film | — |
| Horror | — | — | 5.61 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Chongo's Friend.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2020My Spy
6.9 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 Todd.
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 Todd
Directed by Peter Segal
as Chongo's Friend
Directed by Adam Rifkin
as Terrance
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
Todd
My Spy (2020)
Performance score6.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Todd gives Noah Dalton Danby a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Chongo's Friend
Detroit Rock City (1999)
Performance score6.6
Detroit Rock City asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Chongo's Friend is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Todd
My Spy The Eternal City (2024)
Performance score6.5
My Spy The Eternal City asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Todd is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
James
Wings Over Everest (2019)
Performance score6.5
Wings Over Everest asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. James 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 Todd
Start here. My Spy is the clearest statement of what Noah Dalton Danby does — accessible, 99 minutes, and rated 6.9 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Noah 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 Rock City (1999)
Keeps the comedy register of My Spy but asks for a colder reading of it.
Wings Over Everest (2019)
A deliberate change of key after Detroit Rock City — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
She Never Died (2019)
Same director as Wings Over Everest, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
My Spy The Eternal City (2024)
Keeps the action register of She Never Died but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Peter Segal
Director
2 films together · 6.7 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
My SpyAdam Rifkin
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Detroit Rock CityDavid Twohy
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
RiddickAndrzej Bartkowiak
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Exit WoundsSix 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
My Spy
as Todd
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 Rock City
as Chongo's Friend
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
My Spy
as Todd
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Detroit Rock City
as Chongo's Friend
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
My Spy
as Todd
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. Noah Dalton Danby 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
25 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.
Action Legend
Awarded
7 catalogue titles in action, 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
My Spy
as Todd
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Riddick
as Nunez
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Detroit Rock City
as Chongo's Friend
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Exit Wounds
as Terrorist Leader
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
My Spy
as Todd
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
My Spy The Eternal City
as Todd
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Detroit Rock City
as Chongo's Friend
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Riddick
as Nunez
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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Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: family and comedy
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: family and comedy
Ted Levine
Built a career in the same territory: crime and thriller
Elliot Page
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Have your say
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Reference
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