Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3143
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Yasiin Bey represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 25 years in, and Yasiin is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Yasiin Bey appears in 16 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Yasiin. Something the Lord Made is the clearest case: a film rated 7.4 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 music, documentary, romance. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Nas, John Carney, Casey Affleck and others, Yasiin Bey 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.
Something the Lord Made (2004) as Vivien Thomas · Ghosts (1997) as Dante · Begin Again (2014) as Saul
Career snapshot
Ranked #3143 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
16
1997–2022
Career length
25 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.4
Something the Lord Made
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.1
Ghosts
Most frequent director
Nas
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Nas
Most common genre
Music
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 40m
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
6.6
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
7.4 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Ghosts — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
7.4
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
8.1
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. Ghosts.
Most productive era
2000s
9 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 | — | 6.94 films | 6.72 films | — |
| Action | — | 6.53 films | — | — |
| Thriller | — | 6.61 film | — | — |
| Comedy | — | 6.44 films | 6.53 films | — |
| Crime | — | 6.73 films | 6.01 film | — |
| Romance | — | — | 7.21 film | — |
| Horror | 7.41 film | — | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance
1997Ghosts
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Dante. 7.4 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
2022Hargrove
The current state of the argument, as Self.
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.
16 of 16 films
as Vivien Thomas
Directed by Joseph Sargent
as Ford Prefect
Directed by Garth Jennings
as Saul
Directed by John Carney
as Left Ear
Directed by F. Gary Gray
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
Vivien Thomas
Something the Lord Made (2004)
Performance score7.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Vivien Thomas gives Yasiin Bey a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Dante
Ghosts (1997)
Performance score7.5
Ghosts asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Dante is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Ford Prefect
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
Performance score7.2
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Ford Prefect is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Saul
Begin Again (2014)
Performance score7.1
Begin Again asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Saul 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 Vivien Thomas
Start here. Something the Lord Made is the clearest statement of what Yasiin Bey does — accessible, 110 minutes, and rated 7.4 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Yasiin 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.
Ghosts (1997)
A deliberate change of key after Something the Lord Made — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Italian Job (2003)
A deliberate change of key after Ghosts — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
A deliberate change of key after The Italian Job — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Begin Again (2014)
Keeps the comedy register of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Stan Winston
Director
1 film together
Notably Ghosts
F. Gary Gray
Director
1 film together
Notably The Italian Job
Nicole Kassell
Director
1 film together
Notably The Woodsman
Joseph Sargent
Director
1 film together
Notably Something the Lord Made
Garth Jennings
Director
1 film together
Notably The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Adam McKay
Director
1 film together
Notably Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
Richard Donner
Director
1 film together
Notably 16 Blocks
Darnell Martin
Director
1 film together
Notably Cadillac Records
Michel Gondry
Director
1 film together
Notably Be Kind Rewind
Casey Affleck
Director
1 film together
Notably I'm Still Here
John Carney
Director
1 film together
Notably Begin Again
Nas
Director
1 film together
Notably You're Watching Video Music Box
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Joseph Sargent
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Something the Lord MadeStan Winston
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
GhostsJohn Carney
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Begin AgainDarnell Martin
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Cadillac RecordsF. Gary Gray
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Italian JobGarth Jennings
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the GalaxyNicole Kassell
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The WoodsmanRichard Donner
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
16 BlocksAdam McKay
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky BobbyMichel Gondry
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Be Kind RewindNas
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
You're Watching Video Music BoxCasey Affleck
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
I'm Still HereSix 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
Something the Lord Made
as Vivien Thomas
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Begin Again
as Saul
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Ghosts
as Dante
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
as Mos Def
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Something the Lord Made
as Vivien Thomas
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. Yasiin Bey 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.
Music Legend
Awarded
7 catalogue titles in music, 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
Ghosts
as Dante
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Ghosts
as Dante
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Begin Again
as Saul
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Woodsman
as Sgt. Lucas
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
16 Blocks
as Eddie Bunker
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
16 Blocks
as Eddie Bunker
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Begin Again
as Saul
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Showtime
as Lazy Boy
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Tom Wilkinson
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
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Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Mark Ruffalo
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Have your say
Community
Which Yasiin Bey performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
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Reference
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