Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3129
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Johnny Pemberton 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.
Johnny Pemberton appears in 15 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Johnny. Ant-Man is the clearest case: a film rated 7.3 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, horror, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Tyler Cornack, Eric Appel, Debra Neil-Fisher and others, Johnny Pemberton 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.
Ant-Man (2015) as Ice Cream Store Customer · 22 Jump Street (2014) as Delroy · 21 Jump Street (2012) as Delroy
Career snapshot
Ranked #3129 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
15
2012–2026
Career length
14 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.3
Ant-Man
Average Nutevio score
5.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.0
Home
Most frequent director
Phil Lord
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Phil Lord
Most common genre
Comedy
12 titles
Average runtime
1h 31m
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
6.3 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Tone-Deaf, Against the Clock, Action Point — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.3
Across 9 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
5.9
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. Tone-Deaf, Against the Clock, Action Point.
Most productive era
2010s
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 | 5.81 film | 6.11 film |
| Action | 6.55 films | — |
| Thriller | 5.72 films | — |
| Comedy | 6.27 films | 4.95 films |
| Crime | 7.02 films | — |
| Horror | 5.81 film | 3.02 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2012The Watch
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Punk Kid.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2015Ant-Man
7.3 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
2026Mermaid
The current state of the argument, as Doug Nelson.
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.
15 of 15 films
as Ice Cream Store Customer
Directed by Peyton Reed
as Delroy
Directed by Phil Lord
as Delroy
Directed by Phil Lord
as Doug Nelson
Directed by Tyler Cornack
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
Ice Cream Store Customer
Ant-Man (2015)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Ice Cream Store Customer gives Johnny Pemberton a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Delroy
22 Jump Street (2014)
Performance score6.9
22 Jump Street asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Delroy is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Delroy
21 Jump Street (2012)
Performance score6.9
21 Jump Street asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Delroy is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Doug Nelson
Mermaid (2026)
Performance score6.8
Mermaid asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Doug Nelson 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 Ice Cream Store Customer
Start here. Ant-Man is the clearest statement of what Johnny Pemberton does — accessible, 117 minutes, and rated 7.3 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.
21 Jump Street (2012)
Keeps the action register of Ant-Man but asks for a colder reading of it.
22 Jump Street (2014)
Same director as 21 Jump Street, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022)
Keeps the comedy register of 22 Jump Street but asks for a colder reading of it.
Mermaid (2026)
Keeps the comedy register of Weird: The Al Yankovic Story but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Phil Lord
Director
2 films together
Notably 22 Jump Street
Judd Apatow
Director
1 film together
Notably This Is 40
Akiva Schaffer
Director
1 film together
Notably The Watch
Peyton Reed
Director
1 film together
Notably Ant-Man
Nicholas Stoller
Director
1 film together
Notably Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising
Tim Kirkby
Director
1 film together
Notably Action Point
Mark Polish
Director
1 film together
Notably Against the Clock
Debra Neil-Fisher
Director
1 film together
Notably Unplugging
Eric Appel
Director
1 film together
Notably Weird: The Al Yankovic Story
Tyler Cornack
Director
1 film together
Notably Mermaid
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Phil Lord
Director
2 films together · 7.0 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
22 Jump StreetPeyton Reed
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Ant-ManEric Appel
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Weird: The Al Yankovic StoryTyler Cornack
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
MermaidJudd Apatow
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
This Is 40Nicholas Stoller
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Neighbors 2: Sorority RisingAkiva Schaffer
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The WatchDebra Neil-Fisher
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
UnpluggingTim Kirkby
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Action PointMark Polish
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Against the ClockSix 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
Ant-Man
as Ice Cream Store Customer
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story
as Johnny Barf
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Ant-Man
as Ice Cream Store Customer
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Ant-Man
as Ice Cream Store Customer
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Ant-Man
as Ice Cream Store Customer
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 Pemberton 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
12 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
Ant-Man
as Ice Cream Store Customer
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
22 Jump Street
as Delroy
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Action Point
as Ziffel
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
21 Jump Street
as Delroy
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Ant-Man
as Ice Cream Store Customer
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Ant-Man
as Ice Cream Store Customer
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Action Point
as Ziffel
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Against the Clock
as Scotty
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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