Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#1894
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Drew Starkey 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.
Drew Starkey appears in 13 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Drew. Love, Simon is the clearest case: a film rated 7.9 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, horror, thriller. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Adam Wingard, Luca Guadagnino, Sara Zandieh and others, Drew Starkey 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.
Love, Simon (2018) as Garrett · The Hate U Give (2018) as Brian MacIntosh · Just Mercy (2019) as Young Guard
Career snapshot
Ranked #1894 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
13
2018–2026
Career length
8 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.9
Love, Simon
Average Nutevio score
6.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.1
The Hate U Give
Most frequent director
Adam Wingard
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Adam Wingard
Most common genre
Drama
10 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
6.2
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
2010s
7.1 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Just Mercy, Mine 9, The Hate U Give — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.1
Across 5 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
7.2
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2010s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Just Mercy, Mine 9, The Hate U Give.
Most productive era
2020s
8 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 | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.15 films | 6.95 films |
| Action | — | 3.42 films |
| Thriller | 5.51 film | 4.53 films |
| Comedy | 7.91 film | 7.01 film |
| Crime | 7.43 films | 7.21 film |
| Romance | 7.91 film | 6.82 films |
| Horror | — | 3.12 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2018The Hate U Give
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Brian MacIntosh.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2018Love, Simon
7.9 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
2026Onslaught
The current state of the argument.
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 Garrett
Directed by Greg Berlanti
as Brian MacIntosh
Directed by George Tillman Jr.
as Young Guard
Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton
as Zack MacLaren
Directed by Sara Zandieh
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
Garrett
Love, Simon (2018)
Performance score7.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Garrett gives Drew Starkey a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Ricky
Extended Stay (2020)
Performance score7.6
Extended Stay asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Ricky is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Brian MacIntosh
The Hate U Give (2018)
Performance score7.6
The Hate U Give asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Brian MacIntosh is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Young Guard
Just Mercy (2019)
Performance score7.5
Just Mercy asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Young Guard 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 Garrett
Start here. Love, Simon is the clearest statement of what Drew Starkey does — accessible, 110 minutes, and rated 7.9 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Drew 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.
The Hate U Give (2018)
Keeps the drama register of Love, Simon but asks for a colder reading of it.
Just Mercy (2019)
Keeps the crime register of The Hate U Give but asks for a colder reading of it.
Extended Stay (2020)
Keeps the drama register of Just Mercy but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Other Zoey (2023)
Keeps the drama register of Extended Stay but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Bart Layton
Director
1 film together
Notably American Animals
Greg Berlanti
Director
1 film together
Notably Love, Simon
George Tillman Jr.
Director
1 film together
Notably The Hate U Give
Destin Daniel Cretton
Director
1 film together
Notably Just Mercy
Antonio Campos
Director
1 film together
Notably The Devil All the Time
David Bruckner
Director
1 film together
Notably Hellraiser
Sara Zandieh
Director
1 film together
Notably The Other Zoey
Luca Guadagnino
Director
1 film together
Notably Queer
Adam Wingard
Director
1 film together
Notably Onslaught
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Greg Berlanti
Director
1 film together · 7.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Love, SimonGeorge Tillman Jr.
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Hate U GiveDestin Daniel Cretton
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Just MercyAntonio Campos
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Devil All the TimeSara Zandieh
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Other ZoeyBart Layton
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
American AnimalsLuca Guadagnino
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
QueerDavid Bruckner
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
HellraiserAdam Wingard
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
OnslaughtSix 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
The Hate U Give
as Brian MacIntosh
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Love, Simon
as Garrett
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Love, Simon
as Garrett
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Just Mercy
as Young Guard
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Love, Simon
as Garrett
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. Drew Starkey 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.
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
10 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
Love, Simon
as Garrett
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Hate U Give
as Brian MacIntosh
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Queer
as Eugene Allerton
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Devil All the Time
as Tommy Matson
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Love, Simon
as Garrett
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Embattled
as Tanner Van Holt
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Other Zoey
as Zack MacLaren
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Other Zoey
as Zack MacLaren
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Matt Damon
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
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Edward Norton
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
Have your say
Community
Which Drew Starkey performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
Join the conversation
Reference
Continue exploring
Trending performers
Directors they work with
Collections to read next
