Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3527
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Kid Cudi 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.
Kid Cudi appears in 20 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Kid. Entergalactic is the clearest case: a film rated 7.7 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 music, documentary, horror. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Brittany Snow, M. Night Shyamalan, Walt Dohrn and others, Kid Cudi 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.
Entergalactic (2022) as Jabari (voice) · A Man Named Scott (2021) as Self · Trolls Band Together (2023) as Clay (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #3527 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
20
2013–2025
Career length
12 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.7
Entergalactic
Average Nutevio score
6.1
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.7
Entergalactic
Most frequent director
Brittany Snow
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Brittany Snow
Most common genre
Comedy
9 titles
Average runtime
1h 33m
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
6.2
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
6.2 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. In Whose Name?, Spilled Milk, Parachute — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
6.2
Across 15 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
6.2
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. Drunk Parents, Jexi, Entourage.
Most productive era
2020s
15 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 | 6.03 films | 6.54 films |
| Action | 6.41 film | 6.42 films |
| Thriller | 6.41 film | 6.23 films |
| Comedy | 5.74 films | 6.75 films |
| Crime | 6.41 film | 5.94 films |
| Romance | — | 7.22 films |
| Horror | — | 4.93 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2013Goodbye World
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Lev.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2022Entergalactic
7.7 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
2025Spilled Milk
The current state of the argument, as Barry.
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 Jabari (voice)
Directed by Unknown
as Clay (voice)
Directed by Walt Dohrn
as DJ Chello
Directed by Adam McKay
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
Jabari (voice)
Entergalactic (2022)
Performance score8.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Jabari (voice) gives Kid Cudi a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Self
A Man Named Scott (2021)
Performance score8.1
A Man Named Scott 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#3
Clay (voice)
Trolls Band Together (2023)
Performance score7.2
Trolls Band Together asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Clay (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Man
The Farmer's Daughters (2022)
Performance score7.0
The Farmer's Daughters asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Man 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 Jabari (voice)
Start here. Entergalactic is the clearest statement of what Kid Cudi does — accessible, 93 minutes, and rated 7.7 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Kid 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.
A Man Named Scott (2021)
Keeps the music register of Entergalactic but asks for a colder reading of it.
Don't Look Up (2021)
A deliberate change of key after A Man Named Scott — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Farmer's Daughters (2022)
A deliberate change of key after Don't Look Up — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Trolls Band Together (2023)
A deliberate change of key after The Farmer's Daughters — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Doug Ellin
Director
1 film together
Notably Entourage
Jon Lucas
Director
1 film together
Notably Jexi
Fred Wolf
Director
1 film together
Notably Drunk Parents
Dean Parisot
Director
1 film together
Notably Bill & Ted Face the Music
Robert Alexander
Director
1 film together
Notably A Man Named Scott
Adam McKay
Director
1 film together
Notably Don't Look Up
Ti West
Director
1 film together
Notably The Farmer's Daughters
Calmatic
Director
1 film together
Notably House Party
Kyle Patrick Alvarez
Director
1 film together
Notably Crater
John Woo
Director
1 film together
Notably Silent Night
Walt Dohrn
Director
1 film together
Notably Trolls Band Together
M. Night Shyamalan
Director
1 film together
Notably Trap
Brittany Snow
Director
1 film together
Notably Parachute
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Robert Alexander
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Man Named ScottWalt Dohrn
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Trolls Band TogetherAdam McKay
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Don't Look UpJon Lucas
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
JexiBrittany Snow
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
ParachuteKyle Patrick Alvarez
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
CraterTi West
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 Farmer's DaughtersM. 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
TrapJohn Woo
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Silent NightDoug Ellin
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
EntourageDean Parisot
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Bill & Ted Face the MusicCalmatic
Director
1 film together · 5.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
House PartyFred Wolf
Director
1 film together · 4.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Drunk ParentsSix 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
Entergalactic
as Jabari (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
Entergalactic
as Jabari (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
Entergalactic
as Jabari (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
In Whose Name?
as Self
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Entergalactic
as Jabari (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. Kid Cudi 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.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
9 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
Trolls Band Together
as Clay (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Need for Speed
as Benny Jackson
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Parachute
as Justin
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Crisis
as Ben Walker
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Crater
as Michael
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Crater
as Michael
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Trolls Band Together
as Clay (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Trolls Band Together
as Clay (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
Elliot Page
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
Have your say
Community
Which Kid Cudi 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
