Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#1994
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Josh Keaton represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 33 years in, and Josh is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Josh Keaton appears in 17 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Josh. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is the clearest case: a film rated 8.5 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, animation, family. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Genndy Tartakovsky, Joaquim Dos Santos, Sam Liu and others, Josh Keaton 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.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) as Spectacular Spider-Man (voice) · Hercules (1997) as Young Hercules (voice) · Ben 10 vs. the Universe: The Movie (2020) as XLR8 (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #1994 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
17
1992–2025
Career length
33 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.5
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Average Nutevio score
6.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.3
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Most frequent director
Sam Liu
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Sam Liu
Most common genre
Animation
15 titles
Average runtime
1h 15m
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
6.9
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
7.2 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Hercules, Newsies — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
7.2
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
7.1
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. Hercules, Newsies.
Most productive era
2020s
8 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 | 6.71 film | — | — |
| Action | — | 6.73 films | 7.24 films |
| Comedy | 7.61 film | 6.45 films | 6.72 films |
| Crime | — | — | 6.71 film |
| Romance | 7.61 film | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1992Newsies
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Newsies Dancer (as Joshua Wiener).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2023Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
8.5 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
The current state of the argument, as Stanley (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.
17 of 17 films
as Spectacular Spider-Man (voice)
Directed by Joaquim Dos Santos
as Young Hercules (voice)
Directed by John Musker
as XLR8 (voice)
Directed by Henrique Jardim
as Tommie / Chad Holdout (voice)
Directed by Ethan Spaulding
as Executive (voice) / Terrance (voice)
Directed by Matt Peters
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
Spectacular Spider-Man (voice)
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)
Performance score8.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Spectacular Spider-Man (voice) gives Josh Keaton a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Young Hercules (voice)
Hercules (1997)
Performance score7.9
Hercules asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Young Hercules (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
XLR8 (voice)
Ben 10 vs. the Universe: The Movie (2020)
Performance score7.3
Ben 10 vs. the Universe: The Movie asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. XLR8 (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Tommie / Chad Holdout (voice)
LEGO Scooby-Doo! Blowout Beach Bash (2017)
Performance score7.1
LEGO Scooby-Doo! Blowout Beach Bash asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Tommie / Chad Holdout (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 Spectacular Spider-Man (voice)
Start here. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is the clearest statement of what Josh Keaton does — accessible, 140 minutes, and rated 8.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Josh 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.
Hercules (1997)
Keeps the adventure register of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse but asks for a colder reading of it.
LEGO Scooby-Doo! Blowout Beach Bash (2017)
Keeps the comedy register of Hercules but asks for a colder reading of it.
Ben 10 vs. the Universe: The Movie (2020)
Keeps the animation register of LEGO Scooby-Doo! Blowout Beach Bash but asks for a colder reading of it.
LEGO DC: Shazam! Magic and Monsters (2020)
Keeps the adventure register of Ben 10 vs. the Universe: The Movie but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Matt Peters
Director
2 films together
Notably LEGO DC: Shazam! Magic and Monsters
Henrique Jardim
Director
2 films together
Notably Ben 10 vs. the Universe: The Movie
Sam Liu
Director
2 films together
Notably Justice League: Gods and Monsters
Kenny Ortega
Director
1 film together
Notably Newsies
John Musker
Director
1 film together
Notably Hercules
Ethan Spaulding
Director
1 film together
Notably LEGO Scooby-Doo! Blowout Beach Bash
Kelly Asbury
Director
1 film together
Notably Smurfs: The Lost Village
Andrew Duncan
Director
1 film together
Notably LEGO Marvel Spider-Man: Vexed by Venom
Joaquim Dos Santos
Director
1 film together
Notably Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Genndy Tartakovsky
Director
1 film together
Notably Fixed
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Sam Liu
Director
2 films together · 6.9 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Justice League: Gods and MonstersMatt Peters
Director
2 films together · 6.9 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
LEGO DC: Shazam! Magic and MonstersHenrique Jardim
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
Ben 10 vs. the Universe: The MovieJoaquim Dos Santos
Director
1 film together · 8.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-VerseJohn Musker
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
HerculesEthan Spaulding
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
LEGO Scooby-Doo! Blowout Beach BashKenny Ortega
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
NewsiesKelly Asbury
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Smurfs: The Lost VillageAndrew Duncan
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
LEGO Marvel Spider-Man: Vexed by VenomGenndy Tartakovsky
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
FixedSix 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
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
as Spectacular Spider-Man (voice)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Hercules
as Young Hercules (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
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
as Spectacular Spider-Man (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Newsies
as Newsies Dancer (as Joshua Wiener)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
as Spectacular Spider-Man (voice)
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. Josh Keaton 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
33 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.
Animation Legend
Awarded
15 catalogue titles in animation, 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
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
as Spectacular Spider-Man (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
as Spectacular Spider-Man (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Hercules
as Young Hercules (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
LEGO Scooby-Doo! Blowout Beach Bash
as Tommie / Chad Holdout (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
as Spectacular Spider-Man (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
as Spectacular Spider-Man (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Hercules
as Young Hercules (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
as Spectacular Spider-Man (voice)
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
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Have your say
Community
Which Josh Keaton 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
