Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#4462
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Jonathan Bailey 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.
Jonathan Bailey appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Jonathan. Wicked: One Wonderful Night is the clearest case: a film rated 8.2 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 action, science fiction, adventure. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Gareth Edwards, Jon M. Chu, Paul Dugdale and others, Jonathan Bailey 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.
Wicked: One Wonderful Night (2025) as Self · Testament of Youth (2015) as Geoffrey · Wicked (2024) as Fiyero
Career snapshot
Ranked #4462 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
2004–2025
Career length
21 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.2
Wicked: One Wonderful Night
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.2
Wicked: One Wonderful Night
Most frequent director
Jon M. Chu
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Jon M. Chu
Most common genre
Adventure
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 53m
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
6.5
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
7.0 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Jurassic World Rebirth, Wicked: For Good, Wicked: One Wonderful Night — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
7.0
Across 5 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
6.9
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. Elizabeth: The Golden Age, St Trinian's, Five Children and It.
Most productive era
2020s
5 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 | 6.71 film | 6.62 films | 7.01 film |
| Action | — | — | 6.51 film |
| Comedy | 5.91 film | — | — |
| Romance | 6.71 film | — | 6.82 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Cyril.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2025Wicked: One Wonderful Night
8.2 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. 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.
10 of 10 films
as Fiyero
Directed by Jon M. Chu
as Father (voice)
Directed by Unknown
as Dr. Henry Loomis
Directed by Gareth Edwards
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
Wicked: One Wonderful Night (2025)
Performance score7.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Self gives Jonathan Bailey a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Geoffrey
Testament of Youth (2015)
Performance score7.2
Testament of Youth asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Geoffrey is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Fiyero
Wicked (2024)
Performance score7.1
Wicked asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Fiyero is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Father (voice)
The Best Birthday Ever (2022)
Performance score7.1
The Best Birthday Ever asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Father (voice) 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. Wicked: One Wonderful Night is the clearest statement of what Jonathan Bailey does — accessible, 84 minutes, and rated 8.2 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Jonathan 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.
Testament of Youth (2015)
A deliberate change of key after Wicked: One Wonderful Night — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Best Birthday Ever (2022)
A deliberate change of key after Testament of Youth — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Wicked (2024)
A deliberate change of key after The Best Birthday Ever — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Jurassic World Rebirth (2025)
A deliberate change of key after Wicked — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Jon M. Chu
Director
2 films together
Notably Wicked
Oliver Parker
Director
1 film together
Notably St Trinian's
Shekhar Kapur
Director
1 film together
Notably Elizabeth: The Golden Age
James Kent
Director
1 film together
Notably Testament of Youth
James Marsh
Director
1 film together
Notably The Mercy
Paul Dugdale
Director
1 film together
Notably Wicked: One Wonderful Night
Gareth Edwards
Director
1 film together
Notably Jurassic World Rebirth
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Jon M. Chu
Director
2 films together · 6.8 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
WickedPaul Dugdale
Director
1 film together · 8.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Wicked: One Wonderful NightJames Kent
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Testament of YouthShekhar Kapur
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Elizabeth: The Golden AgeGareth Edwards
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Jurassic World RebirthJames Marsh
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 MercyOliver Parker
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
St Trinian'sSix 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
Wicked: One Wonderful Night
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
Wicked
as Fiyero
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Wicked: One Wonderful Night
as Self
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
St Trinian's
as Bedales Pupil 2
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Wicked: One Wonderful Night
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. Jonathan Bailey 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
21 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.
Adventure Legend
Awarded
5 catalogue titles in adventure, 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
Wicked: One Wonderful Night
as Self
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Wicked: One Wonderful Night
as Self
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Wicked: For Good
as Fiyero / The Scarecrow
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Five Children and It
as Cyril
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Wicked: One Wonderful Night
as Self
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Jurassic World Rebirth
as Dr. Henry Loomis
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Testament of Youth
as Geoffrey
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Jurassic World Rebirth
as Dr. Henry Loomis
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
Tom Wilkinson
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
Elliot Page
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Have your say
Community
Which Jonathan Bailey performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
Join the conversation
Reference
Continue exploring
Trending performers
Directors they work with
Collections to read next
