Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#12178
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Don Yesso represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 31 years in, and Don is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Don Yesso appears in 13 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Don. Hocus Pocus is the clearest case: a film rated 7.1 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, crime, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Phillip Noyce, Nima Nourizadeh, Glenn Ficarra and others, Don Yesso 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.
Hocus Pocus (1993) as Bus Driver · Focus (2015) as Card Player / Football Coach · Blast from the Past (1999) as Jerry
Career snapshot
Ranked #12178 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
13
1992–2023
Career length
31 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.1
Hocus Pocus
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.0
Hocus Pocus
Most frequent director
Phillip Noyce
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Phillip Noyce
Most common genre
Action
6 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
6.5
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
6.8 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Blast from the Past, Hocus Pocus, Hero — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
6.8
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
6.7
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. Blast from the Past, Hocus Pocus, Hero.
Most productive era
2010s
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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.62 films | 6.31 film | 5.91 film | 6.41 film |
| Action | — | — | 5.85 films | 6.41 film |
| Thriller | — | — | 5.83 films | — |
| Comedy | 6.83 films | 6.11 film | 6.62 films | — |
| Crime | — | 6.31 film | 6.24 films | 6.41 film |
| Romance | 6.81 film | — | 7.01 film | — |
| Horror | — | — | 5.51 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1992Hero
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Elliott.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1993Hocus Pocus
7.1 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
2023Fast Charlie
The current state of the argument, as Tony D.
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.
13 of 13 films
as Bus Driver
Directed by Kenny Ortega
as Card Player / Football Coach
Directed by Glenn Ficarra
as Tony D
Directed by Phillip Noyce
as Captain Meechum
Directed by Unknown
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
Bus Driver
Hocus Pocus (1993)
Performance score7.0
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Bus Driver gives Don Yesso a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Card Player / Football Coach
Focus (2015)
Performance score6.9
Focus asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Card Player / Football Coach is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Jerry
Blast from the Past (1999)
Performance score6.7
Blast from the Past asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Jerry is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Tony D
Fast Charlie (2023)
Performance score6.5
Fast Charlie asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Tony D 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 Bus Driver
Start here. Hocus Pocus is the clearest statement of what Don Yesso does — accessible, 96 minutes, and rated 7.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Don 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.
Blast from the Past (1999)
Keeps the comedy register of Hocus Pocus but asks for a colder reading of it.
Focus (2015)
Keeps the romance register of Blast from the Past but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Demonologist (2019)
The turn in the path: a film the public underrates and we do not. By this point you will know why.
Fast Charlie (2023)
A deliberate change of key after The Demonologist — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Stephen Frears
Director
1 film together
Notably Hero
Kenny Ortega
Director
1 film together
Notably Hocus Pocus
Hugh Wilson
Director
1 film together
Notably Blast from the Past
Shawn Levy
Director
1 film together
Notably Big Fat Liar
Werner Herzog
Director
1 film together
Notably Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
Walter Hill
Director
1 film together
Notably Bullet to the Head
Antonio Negret
Director
1 film together
Notably Transit
Glenn Ficarra
Director
1 film together
Notably Focus
Nima Nourizadeh
Director
1 film together
Notably American Ultra
Phillip Noyce
Director
1 film together
Notably Fast Charlie
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Kenny Ortega
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hocus PocusGlenn Ficarra
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
FocusHugh Wilson
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Blast from the PastPhillip Noyce
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fast CharlieStephen Frears
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
HeroWerner Herzog
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New OrleansNima Nourizadeh
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
American UltraShawn Levy
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Big Fat LiarAntonio Negret
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
TransitWalter Hill
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Bullet to the HeadSix 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
Focus
as Card Player / Football Coach
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Blast from the Past
as Jerry
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Hocus Pocus
as Bus Driver
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Fantastic Four
as General
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Hocus Pocus
as Bus Driver
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. Don Yesso 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
31 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.
Action Legend
Awarded
6 catalogue titles in action, 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
Hocus Pocus
as Bus Driver
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Fast Charlie
as Tony D
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Blast from the Past
as Jerry
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Demonologist
as Captain Meechum
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Fast Charlie
as Tony D
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Fantastic Four
as General
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Blast from the Past
as Jerry
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Demonologist
as Captain Meechum
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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