Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#8549
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Sherman Augustus represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 33 years in, and Sherman is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Sherman Augustus appears in 7 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Sherman. What's Love Got to Do with It is the clearest case: a film rated 6.8 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, action. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Gore Verbinski, John Bruno, Brian Gibson, Sherman Augustus 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.
What's Love Got to Do with It (1993) as Reggie · Vampires of the Velvet Lounge (2026) as Luke · The Mexican (2001) as Well Dressed Black Man
Career snapshot
Ranked #8549 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
7
1993–2026
Career length
33 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.8
What's Love Got to Do with It
Average Nutevio score
4.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.1
What's Love Got to Do with It
Most frequent director
Gore Verbinski
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Gore Verbinski
Most common genre
Action
4 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
6.3
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
1990s
6.1 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Virus, What's Love Got to Do with It — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
6.1
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
6.2
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. Virus, What's Love Got to Do with It.
Most productive era
2020s
4 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 | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.81 film | — | — |
| Action | 5.41 film | 6.01 film | 0.02 films |
| Thriller | — | — | 0.02 films |
| Comedy | — | 6.01 film | 6.21 film |
| Crime | — | 6.01 film | — |
| Romance | — | 6.01 film | — |
| Horror | 5.41 film | — | 5.72 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
1993What's Love Got to Do with It
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Reggie. 6.8 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
2026Vampires of the Velvet Lounge
The current state of the argument, as Luke.
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
as CIA Head
Directed by Unknown
as Officer Green
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
Reggie
What's Love Got to Do with It (1993)
Performance score6.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Reggie gives Sherman Augustus a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Luke
Vampires of the Velvet Lounge (2026)
Performance score6.5
Vampires of the Velvet Lounge asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Luke is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Bhiza
Red Cargo (2023)
Performance score6.5
Red Cargo asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Bhiza is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
CIA Head
The Origins (2023)
Performance score6.5
The Origins asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. CIA Head 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 Reggie
Start here. What's Love Got to Do with It is the clearest statement of what Sherman Augustus does — accessible, 118 minutes, and rated 6.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Sherman 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 Accursed (2022)
A deliberate change of key after What's Love Got to Do with It — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Red Cargo (2023)
Same director as The Accursed, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
The Origins (2023)
Same director as Red Cargo, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Vampires of the Velvet Lounge (2026)
Same director as The Origins, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
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.
Brian Gibson
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
What's Love Got to Do with ItGore Verbinski
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The MexicanJohn Bruno
Director
1 film together · 5.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
VirusSix 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
What's Love Got to Do with It
as Reggie
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
What's Love Got to Do with It
as Reggie
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
What's Love Got to Do with It
as Reggie
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Mexican
as Well Dressed Black Man
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
What's Love Got to Do with It
as Reggie
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. Sherman Augustus 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
33 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
4 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
What's Love Got to Do with It
as Reggie
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Mexican
as Well Dressed Black Man
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
What's Love Got to Do with It
as Reggie
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Mexican
as Well Dressed Black Man
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
What's Love Got to Do with It
as Reggie
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Virus
as Richie
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Mexican
as Well Dressed Black Man
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Mexican
as Well Dressed Black Man
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Reference
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