Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3193
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Keke Palmer 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.
Keke Palmer appears in 25 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Keke. Big Boss is the clearest case: a film rated 8.8 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 science fiction, comedy, adventure. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Josh Greenbaum, John Donkin, Boots Riley and others, Keke Palmer 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.
Big Boss (2023) as Keke Palmer · Come Home (2021) as Angie (voice) · Under the Boardwalk (2023) as Ramona (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #3193 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
25
2006–2027
Career length
21 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.8
Big Boss
Average Nutevio score
5.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.8
Big Boss
Most frequent director
Josh Greenbaum
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Josh Greenbaum
Most common genre
Comedy
13 titles
Average runtime
1h 21m
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
2000s
6.5 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Shrink, Cleaner, Akeelah and the Bee — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.5
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.4
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. Shrink, Cleaner, Akeelah and the Bee.
Most productive era
2020s
18 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 | 6.72 films | 6.21 film | 5.52 films |
| Action | — | — | 6.41 film |
| Thriller | 6.11 film | 5.11 film | 6.22 films |
| Comedy | 6.21 film | 6.32 films | 4.710 films |
| Crime | 6.11 film | — | 6.22 films |
| Romance | — | — | 7.21 film |
| Horror | — | 5.11 film | 6.81 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Akeelah Anderson.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2023Big Boss
8.8 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
The current state of the argument, as Peaches (voice).
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.
25 of 25 films
as Ramona (voice)
Directed by Unknown
as Angie (voice)
Directed by Garth Jennings
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
Keke Palmer
Big Boss (2023)
Performance score9.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Keke Palmer gives Keke Palmer a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Akeelah Anderson
Akeelah and the Bee (2006)
Performance score7.7
Akeelah and the Bee asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Akeelah Anderson is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Ramona (voice)
Under the Boardwalk (2023)
Performance score7.6
Under the Boardwalk asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Ramona (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Angie (voice)
Come Home (2021)
Performance score7.6
Come Home asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Angie (voice) 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 Keke Palmer
Start here. Big Boss is the clearest statement of what Keke Palmer does — accessible, 41 minutes, and rated 8.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Keke 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.
Akeelah and the Bee (2006)
A deliberate change of key after Big Boss — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Come Home (2021)
A deliberate change of key after Akeelah and the Bee — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Under the Boardwalk (2023)
Keeps the comedy register of Come Home but asks for a colder reading of it.
One of Them Days (2025)
Same director as Under the Boardwalk, 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.
Renny Harlin
Director
1 film together
Notably Cleaner
Jonas Pate
Director
1 film together
Notably Shrink
Brett Simmons
Director
1 film together
Notably Animal
Garth Jennings
Director
1 film together
Notably Come Home
Jordan Peele
Director
1 film together
Notably Nope
Keke Palmer
Director
1 film together
Notably Big Boss
Dave Meyers
Director
1 film together
Notably This Is Me…Now
Tim Story
Director
1 film together
Notably The Pickup
Aziz Ansari
Director
1 film together
Notably Good Fortune
John Rice
Director
1 film together
Notably The Angry Birds Movie 3
Boots Riley
Director
1 film together
Notably I Love Boosters
John Donkin
Director
1 film together
Notably Ice Age: Boiling Point
Josh Greenbaum
Director
1 film together
Notably Spaceballs: The New One
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Keke Palmer
Director
1 film together · 8.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Big BossGarth Jennings
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Come HomeAziz Ansari
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Good FortuneJordan Peele
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
NopeTim Story
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The PickupJonas Pate
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
ShrinkRenny Harlin
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
CleanerBoots Riley
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
I Love BoostersDave Meyers
Director
1 film together · 5.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
This Is Me…NowBrett Simmons
Director
1 film together · 5.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
AnimalJosh Greenbaum
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Spaceballs: The New OneJohn Donkin
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Ice Age: Boiling PointJohn Rice
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 Angry Birds Movie 3Six 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
Big Boss
as Keke Palmer
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Under the Boardwalk
as Ramona (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
Big Boss
as Keke Palmer
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Disney Family Singalong - Volume II
as Self
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Big Boss
as Keke Palmer
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. Keke Palmer 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
21 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.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
13 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
Big Boss
as Keke Palmer
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Big Boss
as Keke Palmer
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Under the Boardwalk
as Ramona (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Cleaner
as Rose Cutler
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Big Boss
as Keke Palmer
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Pickup
as Zoe
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Under the Boardwalk
as Ramona (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Akeelah and the Bee
as Akeelah Anderson
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Jamie Harris
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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