Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#8116
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Jaden Smith 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.
Jaden Smith appears in 14 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Jaden. VOMO: Vote or Miss Out is the clearest case: a film rated 10.0 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 comedy, music, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Anderson .Paak, Rebecca Harrell Tickell, Robert Alexander and others, Jaden Smith 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.
VOMO: Vote or Miss Out (2020) as Self · The Pursuit of Happyness (2006) as Christopher · Life in a Year (2020) as Daryn
Career snapshot
Ranked #8116 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
14
2006–2026
Career length
20 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
10.0
VOMO: Vote or Miss Out
Average Nutevio score
7.0
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
10.0
VOMO: Vote or Miss Out
Most frequent director
Anderson .Paak
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Anderson .Paak
Most common genre
Documentary
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 39m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.0
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
7.5 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. K-Pops!, Groundswell, Entergalactic — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
7.5
Across 9 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
7.5
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. The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Pursuit of Happyness.
Most productive era
2020s
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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.82 films | 6.61 film | 7.22 films |
| Action | — | 5.92 films | — |
| Thriller | 5.71 film | — | — |
| Comedy | — | — | 7.74 films |
| Romance | — | — | 7.82 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Christopher.
First Nutevio masterpiece · Highest rated performance · Career peak
The first film here to clear 9.0 on our scale — a threshold fewer than one film in ten reaches. 10.0 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
2026Groundswell
The current state of the argument, as Narrator (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.
14 of 14 films
as Self
Directed by Unknown
as Daryn
Directed by Mitja Okorn
as Jordan (voice)
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.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Self
VOMO: Vote or Miss Out (2020)
Performance score9.5
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Self gives Jaden Smith a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Daryn
Life in a Year (2020)
Performance score8.4
Life in a Year asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Daryn is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Christopher
The Pursuit of Happyness (2006)
Performance score8.2
The Pursuit of Happyness asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Christopher is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Self
A Man Named Scott (2021)
Performance score7.8
A Man Named Scott asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self 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 Self
Start here. VOMO: Vote or Miss Out is the clearest statement of what Jaden Smith does — accessible, 45 minutes, and rated 10.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Jaden 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 Pursuit of Happyness (2006)
A deliberate change of key after VOMO: Vote or Miss Out — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Life in a Year (2020)
Keeps the drama register of The Pursuit of Happyness but asks for a colder reading of it.
A Man Named Scott (2021)
A deliberate change of key after Life in a Year — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Entergalactic (2022)
Keeps the music register of A Man Named Scott but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Gabriele Muccino
Director
1 film together
Notably The Pursuit of Happyness
Scott Derrickson
Director
1 film together
Notably The Day the Earth Stood Still
M. Night Shyamalan
Director
1 film together
Notably After Earth
Matthew Akers
Director
1 film together
Notably David Blaine: Ascension
Chris Henchy
Director
1 film together
Notably Impractical Jokers: The Movie
Mitja Okorn
Director
1 film together
Notably Life in a Year
Robert Alexander
Director
1 film together
Notably A Man Named Scott
Rebecca Harrell Tickell
Director
1 film together
Notably Groundswell
Anderson .Paak
Director
1 film together
Notably K-Pops!
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Gabriele Muccino
Director
1 film together · 8.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Pursuit of HappynessMitja Okorn
Director
1 film together · 7.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Life in a YearRobert Alexander
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Man Named ScottRebecca Harrell Tickell
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
GroundswellChris Henchy
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Impractical Jokers: The MovieAnderson .Paak
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
K-Pops!Matthew Akers
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
David Blaine: AscensionScott Derrickson
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Day the Earth Stood StillM. Night Shyamalan
Director
1 film together · 5.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
After EarthSix 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
VOMO: Vote or Miss Out
as Self
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Life in a Year
as Daryn
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
VOMO: Vote or Miss Out
as Self
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
VOMO: Vote or Miss Out
as Self
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
VOMO: Vote or Miss Out
as Self
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. Jaden Smith 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
20 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.
Documentary Legend
Awarded
6 catalogue titles in documentary, 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
VOMO: Vote or Miss Out
as Self
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
VOMO: Vote or Miss Out
as Self
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Entergalactic
as Jordan (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
VOMO: Vote or Miss Out
as Self
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
VOMO: Vote or Miss Out
as Self
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Karate Kid
as Dre Parker
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Entergalactic
as Jordan (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Pursuit of Happyness
as Christopher
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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Tom Hanks
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Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Edward Norton
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
Tom Wilkinson
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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