Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#1526
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Joe Keery 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.
Joe Keery appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Joe. Free Guy is the clearest case: a film rated 7.5 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 documentary, science fiction, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Jonny Campbell, Alex Ross Perry, Keir O'Donnell and others, Joe Keery 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.
Free Guy (2021) as Keys · One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5 (2026) as Self (uncredited) · Molly's Game (2017) as Trust Fund Cole
Career snapshot
Ranked #1526 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
2017–2026
Career length
9 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.5
Free Guy
Average Nutevio score
6.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.5
Free Guy
Most frequent director
Jonny Campbell
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Jonny Campbell
Most common genre
Comedy
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 45m
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
6.4
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
7.2 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Molly's Game — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.2
Across 1 catalogue film 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. Molly's Game.
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 | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.21 film | 6.42 films |
| Thriller | — | 6.62 films |
| Comedy | — | 6.77 films |
| Crime | 7.21 film | 6.71 film |
| Romance | — | 6.71 film |
| Horror | — | 6.62 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2017Molly's Game
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Trust Fund Cole.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2021Free Guy
7.5 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
2026Cold Storage
The current state of the argument, as Teacake.
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.
10 of 10 films
as Keys
Directed by Shawn Levy
as Baron
Directed by Keir O'Donnell
as Teacake
Directed by Jonny Campbell
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
Keys
Free Guy (2021)
Performance score7.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Keys gives Joe Keery a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Baron
Marmalade (2024)
Performance score7.4
Marmalade asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Baron is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Self (uncredited)
One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5 (2026)
Performance score7.2
One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Teacake
Cold Storage (2026)
Performance score7.2
Cold Storage asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Teacake 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 Keys
Start here. Free Guy is the clearest statement of what Joe Keery does — accessible, 115 minutes, and rated 7.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Joe 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.
Spree (2020)
Keeps the comedy register of Free Guy but asks for a colder reading of it.
Marmalade (2024)
Keeps the comedy register of Spree but asks for a colder reading of it.
One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5 (2026)
A deliberate change of key after Marmalade — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Cold Storage (2026)
A deliberate change of key after One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5 — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Aaron Sorkin
Director
1 film together
Notably Molly's Game
Alice Mathias
Director
1 film together
Notably Death to 2020
Josh Ruben
Director
1 film together
Notably Death to 2021
Shawn Levy
Director
1 film together
Notably Free Guy
Saverio Costanzo
Director
1 film together
Notably Finally Dawn
Keir O'Donnell
Director
1 film together
Notably Marmalade
Alex Ross Perry
Director
1 film together
Notably Pavements
Jonny Campbell
Director
1 film together
Notably Cold Storage
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Shawn Levy
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Free GuyAaron Sorkin
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Molly's GameJonny Campbell
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Cold StorageAlex Ross Perry
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
PavementsKeir O'Donnell
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
MarmaladeAlice Mathias
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Death to 2020Saverio Costanzo
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Finally DawnJosh Ruben
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Death to 2021Six 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
Free Guy
as Keys
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Marmalade
as Baron
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Free Guy
as Keys
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5
as Self (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Free Guy
as Keys
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. Joe Keery 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.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
7 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
Free Guy
as Keys
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Molly's Game
as Trust Fund Cole
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Marmalade
as Baron
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Molly's Game
as Trust Fund Cole
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Free Guy
as Keys
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Free Guy
as Keys
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Marmalade
as Baron
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Marmalade
as Baron
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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