Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#7827
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Johnny Williams represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 36 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 Williams appears in 8 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Johnny. GoodFellas is the clearest case: a film rated 8.7 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, quiet performance, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for fantasy, adventure, family. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Nathan Greno, Nicol Paone, Peter Farrelly and others, Johnny Williams 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.
GoodFellas (1990) as Johnny Roastbeef · Swapped (2026) as Mr. Dung Beetle (voice) · Green Book (2018) as Fat Paulie
Career snapshot
Ranked #7827 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
8
1990–2026
Career length
36 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.7
GoodFellas
Average Nutevio score
6.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.9
Swapped
Most frequent director
Nathan Greno
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Nathan Greno
Most common genre
Comedy
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 56m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.1
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
7.1
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
1990s
7.6 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. The Mask, GoodFellas, State of Grace — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
7.6
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
7.5
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1990s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Mask, GoodFellas, State of Grace.
Most productive era
1990s
3 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 | 1990s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.82 films | 7.12 films | — |
| Thriller | 7.01 film | — | — |
| Comedy | 7.21 film | 6.43 films | 4.71 film |
| Crime | 7.63 films | — | — |
| Romance | 7.21 film | 5.81 film | — |
| Horror | — | 5.01 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
1990GoodFellas
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Johnny Roastbeef. 8.7 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
2026Swapped
The current state of the argument, as Mr. Dung Beetle (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.
8 of 8 films
as Johnny Roastbeef
Directed by Martin Scorsese
as Mr. Dung Beetle (voice)
Directed by Nathan Greno
as Fat Paulie
Directed by Peter Farrelly
as Burt
Directed by Chuck Russell
as Borelli's Man #2
Directed by Phil Joanou
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
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The defining work
#1
Johnny Roastbeef
GoodFellas (1990)
Performance score8.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Johnny Roastbeef gives Johnny Williams a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Mr. Dung Beetle (voice)
Swapped (2026)
Performance score8.3
Swapped asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mr. Dung Beetle (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Fat Paulie
Green Book (2018)
Performance score8.1
Green Book asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Fat Paulie is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Burt
The Mask (1994)
Performance score7.1
The Mask asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Burt 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 Johnny Roastbeef
Start here. GoodFellas is the clearest statement of what Johnny Williams does — accessible, 145 minutes, and rated 8.7 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.
State of Grace (1990)
Keeps the crime register of GoodFellas but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Mask (1994)
Keeps the crime register of State of Grace but asks for a colder reading of it.
Green Book (2018)
Keeps the comedy register of The Mask but asks for a colder reading of it.
Swapped (2026)
A deliberate change of key after Green Book — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Phil Joanou
Director
1 film together
Notably State of Grace
Martin Scorsese
Director
1 film together
Notably GoodFellas
Chuck Russell
Director
1 film together
Notably The Mask
Warren Beatty
Director
1 film together
Notably Rules Don't Apply
Peter Farrelly
Director
1 film together
Notably Green Book
Nicol Paone
Director
1 film together
Notably Friendsgiving
Nathan Greno
Director
1 film together
Notably Swapped
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Martin Scorsese
Director
1 film together · 8.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
GoodFellasNathan Greno
Director
1 film together · 8.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SwappedPeter Farrelly
Director
1 film together · 8.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Green BookChuck Russell
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 MaskPhil Joanou
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
State of GraceWarren Beatty
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Rules Don't ApplyNicol Paone
Director
1 film together · 4.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
FriendsgivingSix 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
GoodFellas
as Johnny Roastbeef
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Swapped
as Mr. Dung Beetle (voice)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
GoodFellas
as Johnny Roastbeef
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Rules Don't Apply
as Mobster
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
GoodFellas
as Johnny Roastbeef
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 Williams 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
36 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
5 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
Swapped
as Mr. Dung Beetle (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
GoodFellas
as Johnny Roastbeef
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Swapped
as Mr. Dung Beetle (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Swapped
as Mr. Dung Beetle (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Swapped
as Mr. Dung Beetle (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Swapped
as Mr. Dung Beetle (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Green Book
as Fat Paulie
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
GoodFellas
as Johnny Roastbeef
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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Have your say
Community
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