Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#50422
of 909177 performers
Top 10%
Stephen A. Smith 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.
Stephen A. Smith appears in 8 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Stephen. Untold: Malice at the Palace is the clearest case: a film rated 7.2 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, quiet performance, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for documentary, comedy, animation. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Kyle Newacheck, Mike B. Anderson, Michael B. Jordan and others, Stephen A. Smith 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.
Untold: Malice at the Palace (2021) as Self (archive footage) · Creed III (2023) as Stephen A. Smith · Untold: The Death & Life of Lamar Odom (2026) as Self - Commentator, First Take (archive footage)
Career snapshot
Ranked #50422 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
8
2007–2026
Career length
19 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.2
Untold: Malice at the Palace
Average Nutevio score
5.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.2
Untold: Malice at the Palace
Most frequent director
Kyle Newacheck
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Kyle Newacheck
Most common genre
Comedy
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 46m
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
6.2
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
2020s
5.4 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Untold: The Death & Life of Lamar Odom, Happy Gilmore 2, The Simpsons Funday Football — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
5.4
Across 7 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
5.4
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. I Think I Love My Wife.
Most productive era
2020s
7 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 | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 7.11 film |
| Action | — | 7.11 film |
| Comedy | 5.31 film | 3.33 films |
| Crime | — | 7.21 film |
| Romance | 5.31 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Allan.
Highest rated performance
2021Untold: Malice at the Palace
7.2 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
2021Rumble
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2026Untold: The Death & Life of Lamar Odom
The current state of the argument, as Self - Commentator, First Take (archive footage).
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 Self (archive footage)
Directed by Floyd Russ
as Stephen A. Smith
Directed by Michael B. Jordan
as Self - Commentator, First Take (archive footage)
Directed by Unknown
as Stephen A. Smith
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
Marc Remy (voice)
Rumble (2021)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Marc Remy (voice) gives Stephen A. Smith a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Self (archive footage)
Untold: Malice at the Palace (2021)
Performance score7.1
Untold: Malice at the Palace asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self (archive footage) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Stephen A. Smith
Creed III (2023)
Performance score7.0
Creed III asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Stephen A. Smith is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Self - Commentator, First Take (archive footage)
Untold: The Death & Life of Lamar Odom (2026)
Performance score6.7
Untold: The Death & Life of Lamar Odom asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self - Commentator, First Take (archive footage) 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 Marc Remy (voice)
Start here. Rumble is the clearest statement of what Stephen A. Smith does — accessible, 95 minutes, and rated 6.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Stephen 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.
Untold: Malice at the Palace (2021)
A deliberate change of key after Rumble — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Creed III (2023)
A deliberate change of key after Untold: Malice at the Palace — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Happy Gilmore 2 (2025)
A deliberate change of key after Creed III — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Untold: The Death & Life of Lamar Odom (2026)
A deliberate change of key after Happy Gilmore 2 — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Chris Rock
Director
1 film together
Notably I Think I Love My Wife
Floyd Russ
Director
1 film together
Notably Untold: Malice at the Palace
Michael B. Jordan
Director
1 film together
Notably Creed III
Mike B. Anderson
Director
1 film together
Notably The Simpsons Funday Football
Kyle Newacheck
Director
1 film together
Notably Happy Gilmore 2
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Floyd Russ
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Untold: Malice at the PalaceMichael B. Jordan
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Creed IIIKyle 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 2Chris Rock
Director
1 film together · 5.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
I Think I Love My WifeMike B. Anderson
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Simpsons Funday FootballSix 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
Creed III
as Stephen A. Smith
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Rumble
as Marc Remy (voice)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Untold: Malice at the Palace
as Self (archive footage)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Happy Gilmore 2
as Stephen A. Smith
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Rumble
as Marc Remy (voice)
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. Stephen A. Smith 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
4 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
Untold: Malice at the Palace
as Self (archive footage)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Untold: Malice at the Palace
as Self (archive footage)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Rumble
as Marc Remy (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Untold: Malice at the Palace
as Self (archive footage)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Creed III
as Stephen A. Smith
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Creed III
as Stephen A. Smith
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Creed III
as Stephen A. Smith
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Rumble
as Marc Remy (voice)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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