Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#8885
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Kendrick Sampson works on quiet performance 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.
Kendrick Sampson appears in 8 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Kendrick. Killing Castro 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 quiet performance, versatility, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for music, drama, history. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Antoine Fuqua, Eif Rivera, Daryl Wein and others, Kendrick Sampson 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.
Killing Castro (2026) as Malcolm X · Michael (2026) as Quincy Jones · Between the World and Me (2020) as Self
Career snapshot
Ranked #8885 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
8
2019–2026
Career length
7 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
10.0
Killing Castro
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
10.0
Killing Castro
Most frequent director
Antoine Fuqua
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Antoine Fuqua
Most common genre
Drama
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 23m
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
6.6
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
6.8 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Michael, Killing Castro, Eric Jerome Dickey's Friends and Lovers Part I — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
6.8
Across 7 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
6.7
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. Ghosting: The Spirit of Christmas.
Most productive era
2020s
7 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 | — | 6.86 films |
| Comedy | — | 6.62 films |
| Romance | — | 6.62 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2019Ghosting: The Spirit of Christmas
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Ben.
First Nutevio masterpiece · Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2026Killing Castro
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. The current state of the argument, as Malcolm X.
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 Malcolm X
Directed by Eif Rivera
as Quincy Jones
Directed by Antoine Fuqua
as Ethan Greene
Directed by Daryl Wein
as Rob
Directed by Nimisha Mukerji
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
Malcolm X
Killing Castro (2026)
Performance score9.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Malcolm X gives Kendrick Sampson a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Quincy Jones
Michael (2026)
Performance score8.4
Michael asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Quincy Jones is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Self
Between the World and Me (2020)
Performance score7.7
Between the World and Me asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Ethan Greene
Something from Tiffany's (2022)
Performance score7.1
Something from Tiffany's asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Ethan Greene 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 Malcolm X
Start here. Killing Castro is the clearest statement of what Kendrick Sampson 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 Kendrick 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.
Between the World and Me (2020)
Keeps the drama register of Killing Castro but asks for a colder reading of it.
Fashionably Yours (2020)
A deliberate change of key after Between the World and Me — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Something from Tiffany's (2022)
Keeps the romance register of Fashionably Yours but asks for a colder reading of it.
Michael (2026)
Keeps the drama register of Something from Tiffany's but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Channing Godfrey Peoples
Director
1 film together
Notably Miss Juneteenth
Nimisha Mukerji
Director
1 film together
Notably Fashionably Yours
Daryl Wein
Director
1 film together
Notably Something from Tiffany's
Eif Rivera
Director
1 film together
Notably Killing Castro
Antoine Fuqua
Director
1 film together
Notably Michael
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Eif Rivera
Director
1 film together · 10.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Killing CastroAntoine Fuqua
Director
1 film together · 8.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
MichaelDaryl Wein
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Something from Tiffany'sNimisha Mukerji
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fashionably YoursChanning Godfrey Peoples
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Miss JuneteenthSix 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
Michael
as Quincy Jones
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Killing Castro
as Malcolm X
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Killing Castro
as Malcolm X
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Killing Castro
as Malcolm X
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Killing Castro
as Malcolm X
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. Kendrick Sampson 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
6 catalogue titles in drama, 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
Killing Castro
as Malcolm X
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Killing Castro
as Malcolm X
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Michael
as Quincy Jones
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Killing Castro
as Malcolm X
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Killing Castro
as Malcolm X
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Killing Castro
as Malcolm X
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Something from Tiffany's
as Ethan Greene
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Miss Juneteenth
as Ronnie
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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David Krumholtz
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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