Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#1205
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Jonathan Groff 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 Groff appears in 20 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Jonathan. An Evening With Audra McDonald is the clearest case: a film rated 10.0 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 fantasy, adventure, family. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Jennifer Lee, Thomas Kail, Maria Friedman and others, Jonathan Groff 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.
An Evening With Audra McDonald (2020) · Hamilton (2025) as King George · Once Upon a Studio (2023) as Kristoff (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #1205 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
20
2009–2027
Career length
18 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
10.0
An Evening With Audra McDonald
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
10.0
An Evening With Audra McDonald
Most frequent director
Chris Buck
3 films together
Longest collaboration
3×
With Chris Buck
Most common genre
Family
8 titles
Average runtime
1h 26m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.0
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
2010s
7.1 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Frozen II, Olaf's Frozen Adventure, Frozen Fever — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.1
Across 7 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
7.1
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. Taking Woodstock.
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 | 6.21 film | 7.22 films | 7.82 films |
| Action | — | 7.41 film | 6.82 films |
| Thriller | — | — | 6.21 film |
| Comedy | 6.21 film | 6.83 films | 7.14 films |
| Crime | — | 6.61 film | — |
| Romance | — | — | 7.21 film |
| Horror | — | — | 6.21 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2009Taking Woodstock
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Michael Lang.
First Nutevio masterpiece · Highest rated performance · Career peak
2020An Evening With Audra McDonald
The first film here to clear 9.0 on our scale — a threshold fewer than one film in ten reaches. 10.0 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
2027Frozen III
The current state of the argument, as Kristoff (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.
20 of 20 films
as Kristoff (voice)
Directed by Chris Buck
as King George
Directed by Thomas Kail
as Kristoff (voice)
Directed by Dan Abraham
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
An Evening With Audra McDonald
An Evening With Audra McDonald (2020)
Performance score9.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. The role gives Jonathan Groff a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Kristoff (voice)
Frozen (2013)
Performance score7.8
Frozen asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Kristoff (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
King George
Hamilton (2025)
Performance score7.6
Hamilton asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. King George is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Jay Kurundkar
A Nice Indian Boy (2025)
Performance score7.6
A Nice Indian Boy asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Jay Kurundkar 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
Start here. An Evening With Audra McDonald is the clearest statement of what Jonathan Groff does — accessible, 0 minutes, and rated 10.0 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.
Frozen (2013)
A deliberate change of key after An Evening With Audra McDonald — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Once Upon a Studio (2023)
Keeps the fantasy register of Frozen but asks for a colder reading of it.
Hamilton (2025)
Keeps the drama register of Once Upon a Studio but asks for a colder reading of it.
A Nice Indian Boy (2025)
A deliberate change of key after Hamilton — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Chris Buck
Director
3 films together
Notably Frozen
Dan Abraham
Director
2 films together
Notably Once Upon a Studio
Ang Lee
Director
1 film together
Notably Taking Woodstock
Robert Redford
Director
1 film together
Notably The Conspirator
Clint Eastwood
Director
1 film together
Notably American Sniper
Ryan Murphy
Director
1 film together
Notably The Normal Heart
Stevie Wermers-Skelton
Director
1 film together
Notably Olaf's Frozen Adventure
Lana Wachowski
Director
1 film together
Notably The Matrix Resurrections
M. Night Shyamalan
Director
1 film together
Notably Knock at the Cabin
Shannon Tindle
Director
1 film together
Notably Ultraman: Rising
Roshan Sethi
Director
1 film together
Notably A Nice Indian Boy
Maria Friedman
Director
1 film together
Notably Merrily We Roll Along
Thomas Kail
Director
1 film together
Notably Hamilton
Jennifer Lee
Director
1 film together
Notably Frozen III
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Chris Buck
Director
3 films together · 7.2 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
FrozenDan Abraham
Director
2 films together · 7.3 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Once Upon a StudioThomas Kail
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
HamiltonRyan Murphy
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Normal HeartShannon Tindle
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Ultraman: RisingClint Eastwood
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
American SniperRoshan Sethi
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Nice Indian BoyMaria Friedman
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Merrily We Roll AlongRobert Redford
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The ConspiratorStevie Wermers-Skelton
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Olaf's Frozen AdventureLana Wachowski
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Matrix ResurrectionsM. Night Shyamalan
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Knock at the CabinAng Lee
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Taking WoodstockJennifer Lee
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Frozen IIISix 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
An Evening With Audra McDonald
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Hamilton
as King George
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
An Evening With Audra McDonald
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Doctor Who at the Proms
as Rogue (archive footage)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
An Evening With Audra McDonald
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 Groff 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.
Family Legend
Awarded
8 catalogue titles in family, 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
An Evening With Audra McDonald
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
An Evening With Audra McDonald
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Hamilton
as King George
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Knock at the Cabin
as Eric
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
An Evening With Audra McDonald
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Matrix Resurrections
as Smith
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Once Upon a Studio
as Kristoff (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Frozen
as Kristoff (voice)
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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Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Catherine Lagaʻaia
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Dwayne Johnson
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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