Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#10788
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Will Kemp 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.
Will Kemp appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Will. Step Up 2: The Streets is the clearest case: a film rated 6.7 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 action, fantasy, adventure. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Jake Stormoen, Mike Rohl, Michael Damian and others, Will Kemp 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.
Step Up 2: The Streets (2008) as Blake Collins · The Princess Switch 3: Romancing the Star (2021) as Hunter Cunard · Christmas Waltz (2020) as Roman Davidoff
Career snapshot
Ranked #10788 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
2004–2024
Career length
20 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.7
Step Up 2: The Streets
Average Nutevio score
6.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
Mythica: Stormbound
Most frequent director
Jake Stormoen
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Jake Stormoen
Most common genre
Romance
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 37m
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
2000s
6.7 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Step Up 2: The Streets, Van Helsing — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.7
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.6
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. Step Up 2: The Streets, Van Helsing.
Most productive era
2020s
6 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 | 6.71 film | — | 6.52 films |
| Action | 6.61 film | — | 6.51 film |
| Thriller | — | — | 5.81 film |
| Comedy | — | — | 6.53 films |
| Romance | 6.71 film | 6.41 film | 6.54 films |
| Horror | 6.61 film | — | 5.81 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2004Van Helsing
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Velkan.
Highest rated performance
6.7 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
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 The Stranger/Egan.
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.
9 of 9 films
as The Stranger/Egan
Directed by Jake Stormoen
as David Burnside
Directed by Unknown
as Blake Collins
Directed by Jon M. Chu
as Roman Davidoff
Directed by Michael Damian
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
The Stranger/Egan
Mythica: Stormbound (2024)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. The Stranger/Egan gives Will Kemp a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
David Burnside
Jolly Good Christmas (2022)
Performance score7.2
Jolly Good Christmas asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. David Burnside is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Blake Collins
Step Up 2: The Streets (2008)
Performance score7.1
Step Up 2: The Streets asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Blake Collins is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Roman Davidoff
Christmas Waltz (2020)
Performance score7.0
Christmas Waltz asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Roman Davidoff 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 The Stranger/Egan
Start here. Mythica: Stormbound is the clearest statement of what Will Kemp does — accessible, 104 minutes, and rated 6.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Will 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.
Step Up 2: The Streets (2008)
A deliberate change of key after Mythica: Stormbound — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Love, Romance & Chocolate (2019)
Keeps the romance register of Step Up 2: The Streets but asks for a colder reading of it.
Christmas Waltz (2020)
Keeps the romance register of Love, Romance & Chocolate but asks for a colder reading of it.
Jolly Good Christmas (2022)
Keeps the romance register of Christmas Waltz but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Stephen Sommers
Director
1 film together
Notably Van Helsing
Jon M. Chu
Director
1 film together
Notably Step Up 2: The Streets
Michael Damian
Director
1 film together
Notably Christmas Waltz
Mike Rohl
Director
1 film together
Notably The Princess Switch 3: Romancing the Star
Jake Stormoen
Director
1 film together
Notably Mythica: Stormbound
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Jon M. Chu
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Step Up 2: The StreetsMike Rohl
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Princess Switch 3: Romancing the StarMichael Damian
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Christmas WaltzStephen Sommers
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Van HelsingJake Stormoen
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mythica: StormboundSix 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
Van Helsing
as Velkan
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Step Up 2: The Streets
as Blake Collins
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Step Up 2: The Streets
as Blake Collins
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
A Merry Scottish Christmas
as Thomas
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Mythica: Stormbound
as The Stranger/Egan
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. Will Kemp 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
20 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.
Romance Legend
Awarded
6 catalogue titles in romance, 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
Mythica: Stormbound
as The Stranger/Egan
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Van Helsing
as Velkan
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Step Up 2: The Streets
as Blake Collins
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Mythica: Stormbound
as The Stranger/Egan
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Van Helsing
as Velkan
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Van Helsing
as Velkan
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Jolly Good Christmas
as David Burnside
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Barbarians
as John
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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David Krumholtz
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Edward Norton
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Jamie Harris
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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