Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#1406
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Johnny Knoxville represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 26 years in, and Johnny is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Johnny Knoxville appears in 26 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Johnny. Lords of Dogtown 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 comedy, action, documentary. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Gregg Araki, Jeff Tremaine, Claire Scanlon and others, Johnny Knoxville 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.
Lords of Dogtown (2005) as Topper Burks · Jackass: Best and Last (2026) as Self · Jackass Forever (2022) as Self
Career snapshot
Ranked #1406 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
26
2000–2026
Career length
26 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.1
Lords of Dogtown
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.1
Lords of Dogtown
Most frequent director
Jeff Tremaine
6 films together
Longest collaboration
6×
With Jeff Tremaine
Most common genre
Comedy
20 titles
Average runtime
1h 33m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.9
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
2000s
6.5 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Jackass 2.5, Jackass Number Two, Lords of Dogtown — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.5
Across 7 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. Jackass 2.5, Jackass Number Two, Lords of Dogtown.
Most productive era
2020s
12 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 | 6.63 films | 5.62 films | 5.94 films |
| Action | 6.65 films | 5.94 films | 6.73 films |
| Thriller | 6.31 film | 6.02 films | 5.41 film |
| Comedy | 6.45 films | 5.55 films | 6.310 films |
| Crime | — | 5.94 films | — |
| Romance | 6.31 film | — | — |
| Horror | — | — | 5.41 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2000Coyote Ugly
Where our catalogue meets this career, as College Guy.
Highest rated performance
2005Lords of Dogtown
7.1 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
2022Jackass Forever
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 Self.
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.
26 of 26 films
as Self
Directed by Jeff Tremaine
as Self
Directed by Jeff Tremaine
as Self
Directed by Jeff Tremaine
as Self
Directed by Jeff Tremaine
as Self
Directed by Jeff Tremaine
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
Jackass: Best and Last (2026)
Performance score7.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Self gives Johnny Knoxville a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Self
Jackass Forever (2022)
Performance score7.4
Jackass Forever 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 movie#3
Self
Jackass Number Two (2006)
Performance score7.3
Jackass Number Two 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 movie#4
Self
Jackass 4.5 (2022)
Performance score7.1
Jackass 4.5 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. Jackass: Best and Last is the clearest statement of what Johnny Knoxville does — accessible, 92 minutes, and rated 6.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Johnny 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.
Jackass: The Movie (2002)
Same director as Jackass: Best and Last, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Jackass Number Two (2006)
Same director as Jackass: The Movie, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Jackass Forever (2022)
Same director as Jackass Number Two, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Jackass 4.5 (2022)
Same director as Jackass Forever, 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.
Jeff Tremaine
Director
6 films together
Notably Jackass: Best and Last
Barry Sonnenfeld
Director
1 film together
Notably Men in Black II
Kevin Bray
Director
1 film together
Notably Walking Tall
Catherine Hardwicke
Director
1 film together
Notably Lords of Dogtown
Jonas Åkerlund
Director
1 film together
Notably Small Apartments
Kim Jee-woon
Director
1 film together
Notably The Last Stand
Brett Ratner
Director
1 film together
Notably Movie 43
Jonathan Liebesman
Director
1 film together
Notably Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Renny Harlin
Director
1 film together
Notably Skiptrace
Tim Kirkby
Director
1 film together
Notably Action Point
Phillip Noyce
Director
1 film together
Notably Above Suspicion
Claire Scanlon
Director
1 film together
Notably Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the Reverend
Gregg Araki
Director
1 film together
Notably I Want Your Sex
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Jeff Tremaine
Director
6 films together · 6.5 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 6 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Jackass: Best and LastCatherine Hardwicke
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Lords of DogtownBarry Sonnenfeld
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Men in Black IIClaire Scanlon
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the ReverendKevin Bray
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Walking TallGregg Araki
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
I Want Your SexKim Jee-woon
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Last StandPhillip Noyce
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Above SuspicionJonathan Liebesman
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Teenage Mutant Ninja TurtlesRenny Harlin
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SkiptraceJonas Åkerlund
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Small ApartmentsTim Kirkby
Director
1 film together · 5.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Action PointBrett Ratner
Director
1 film together · 4.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Movie 43Six 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
Lords of Dogtown
as Topper Burks
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Coyote Ugly
as College Guy
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Lords of Dogtown
as Topper Burks
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Lords of Dogtown
as Topper Burks
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Jackass: Best and Last
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. Johnny Knoxville 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
26 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
20 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
Lords of Dogtown
as Topper Burks
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Lords of Dogtown
as Topper Burks
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Coyote Ugly
as College Guy
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Last Stand
as Lewis Dinkum
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Lords of Dogtown
as Topper Burks
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Skiptrace
as Connor Watts
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Coyote Ugly
as College Guy
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Men in Black II
as Scrad / Charlie
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Reference
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