Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#16410
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
William Stanford Davis represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 28 years in, and William is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
William Stanford Davis appears in 8 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without William. Undercard is the clearest case: a film rated 8.7 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 drama, comedy, family. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Tamika Miller, Matt Danner, Logan Marshall-Green and others, William Stanford Davis 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.
Undercard (2026) as Baba T · Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw (2025) as Troopmaster Barrett (voice) · Please Stand By (2018) as Creed (uncredited)
Career snapshot
Ranked #16410 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
8
1998–2026
Career length
28 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.7
Undercard
Average Nutevio score
6.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.7
Undercard
Most frequent director
Tamika Miller
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Tamika Miller
Most common genre
Drama
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 41m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.9
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
2020s
7.8 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Undercard, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
7.8
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
7.7
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. City of Angels, Primary Colors.
Most productive era
1990s
2 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.52 films | 6.81 film | 6.82 films | 8.71 film |
| Thriller | — | 5.81 film | — | — |
| Comedy | 6.31 film | 6.81 film | 6.81 film | 6.81 film |
| Romance | 6.81 film | 6.81 film | — | — |
| Horror | — | 5.81 film | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1998City of Angels
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Construction Foreman.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2026Undercard
8.7 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. The current state of the argument, as Baba T.
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 Troopmaster Barrett (voice)
Directed by Matt Danner
as Creed (uncredited)
Directed by Ben Lewin
as Priest
Directed by Nigel Cole
as Construction Foreman
Directed by Brad Silberling
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
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The defining work
#1
Baba T
Undercard (2026)
Performance score8.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Baba T gives William Stanford Davis a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Troopmaster Barrett (voice)
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw (2025)
Performance score6.7
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Troopmaster Barrett (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Creed (uncredited)
Please Stand By (2018)
Performance score6.7
Please Stand By asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Creed (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Priest
A Lot Like Love (2005)
Performance score6.7
A Lot Like Love asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Priest 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 Baba T
Start here. Undercard is the clearest statement of what William Stanford Davis does — accessible, 105 minutes, and rated 8.7 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet William 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.
City of Angels (1998)
Keeps the drama register of Undercard but asks for a colder reading of it.
A Lot Like Love (2005)
Keeps the romance register of City of Angels but asks for a colder reading of it.
Please Stand By (2018)
Keeps the comedy register of A Lot Like Love but asks for a colder reading of it.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw (2025)
Keeps the comedy register of Please Stand By but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Mike Nichols
Director
1 film together
Notably Primary Colors
Brad Silberling
Director
1 film together
Notably City of Angels
Patrick Lussier
Director
1 film together
Notably The Prophecy 3: The Ascent
Nigel Cole
Director
1 film together
Notably A Lot Like Love
Ben Lewin
Director
1 film together
Notably Please Stand By
Logan Marshall-Green
Director
1 film together
Notably Adopt a Highway
Matt Danner
Director
1 film together
Notably Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw
Tamika Miller
Director
1 film together
Notably Undercard
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Tamika Miller
Director
1 film together · 8.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
UndercardMatt Danner
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last StrawBen Lewin
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Please Stand ByNigel Cole
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Lot Like LoveBrad Silberling
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
City of AngelsLogan Marshall-Green
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Adopt a HighwayMike Nichols
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Primary ColorsPatrick Lussier
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Prophecy 3: The AscentSix 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
Undercard
as Baba T
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
City of Angels
as Construction Foreman
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Undercard
as Baba T
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
A Lot Like Love
as Priest
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Undercard
as Baba T
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. William Stanford Davis 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
28 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
6 catalogue titles in drama, 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
Undercard
as Baba T
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Undercard
as Baba T
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
City of Angels
as Construction Foreman
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Prophecy 3: The Ascent
as Portly Coroner
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Undercard
as Baba T
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Undercard
as Baba T
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
A Lot Like Love
as Priest
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Please Stand By
as Creed (uncredited)
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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