Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3142
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Leslie Jones 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.
Leslie Jones appears in 13 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Leslie. The Angry Birds Movie 2 is the clearest case: a film rated 7.1 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 family, animation, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Phil Traill, Craig Brewer, Alice Mathias and others, Leslie Jones 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.
The Angry Birds Movie 2 (2019) as Zeta (voice) · Sing (2016) as Meena's Mother (voice) · The Sloth Lane (2024) as Dotti Pace (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #3142 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
13
2003–2024
Career length
21 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.1
The Angry Birds Movie 2
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.1
Sing
Most frequent director
Phil Traill
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Phil Traill
Most common genre
Comedy
12 titles
Average runtime
1h 37m
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
6.3
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
6.3 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. The Sloth Lane, Good Burger 2, Coming 2 America — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
6.3
Across 5 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
6.3
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. National Security.
Most productive era
2010s
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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.11 film | — |
| Action | 6.01 film | 6.13 films | — |
| Comedy | 6.01 film | 6.17 films | 6.34 films |
| Crime | 6.01 film | 5.81 film | — |
| Romance | — | 5.92 films | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Trucker Woman.
Highest rated performance
2016Sing
7.1 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2024The Sloth Lane
The current state of the argument, as Dotti Pace (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.
13 of 13 films
as Zeta (voice)
Directed by Thurop Van Orman
as Meena's Mother (voice)
Directed by Garth Jennings
as Dotti Pace (voice)
Directed by Unknown
as Charlotte
Directed by Phil Traill
as Mary Junson
Directed by Craig Brewer
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
Zeta (voice)
The Angry Birds Movie 2 (2019)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Zeta (voice) gives Leslie Jones a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Meena's Mother (voice)
Sing (2016)
Performance score7.0
Sing asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Meena's Mother (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Dotti Pace (voice)
The Sloth Lane (2024)
Performance score6.7
The Sloth Lane asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Dotti Pace (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Charlotte
Good Burger 2 (2023)
Performance score6.5
Good Burger 2 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Charlotte 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 Zeta (voice)
Start here. The Angry Birds Movie 2 is the clearest statement of what Leslie Jones does — accessible, 97 minutes, and rated 7.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Leslie 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.
Sing (2016)
Keeps the comedy register of The Angry Birds Movie 2 but asks for a colder reading of it.
Coming 2 America (2021)
Keeps the comedy register of Sing but asks for a colder reading of it.
Good Burger 2 (2023)
Keeps the comedy register of Coming 2 America but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Sloth Lane (2024)
Keeps the family register of Good Burger 2 but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Dennis Dugan
Director
1 film together
Notably National Security
Erik White
Director
1 film together
Notably Lottery Ticket
Chris Rock
Director
1 film together
Notably Top Five
Judd Apatow
Director
1 film together
Notably Trainwreck
Jared Hess
Director
1 film together
Notably Masterminds
Paul Feig
Director
1 film together
Notably Ghostbusters
Garth Jennings
Director
1 film together
Notably Sing
Thurop Van Orman
Director
1 film together
Notably The Angry Birds Movie 2
Alice Mathias
Director
1 film together
Notably Death to 2020
Craig Brewer
Director
1 film together
Notably Coming 2 America
Phil Traill
Director
1 film together
Notably Good Burger 2
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Thurop Van Orman
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Angry Birds Movie 2Garth Jennings
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SingAlice Mathias
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Death to 2020Phil Traill
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Good Burger 2Craig Brewer
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Coming 2 AmericaChris Rock
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Top FiveDennis Dugan
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
National SecurityJared Hess
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
MastermindsJudd Apatow
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
TrainwreckErik White
Director
1 film together · 5.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Lottery TicketPaul Feig
Director
1 film together · 5.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
GhostbustersSix 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
Sing
as Meena's Mother (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
Top Five
as Lisa
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Sing
as Meena's Mother (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Trainwreck
as Angry Subway Patron
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Angry Birds Movie 2
as Zeta (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. Leslie Jones 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.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
12 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
The Angry Birds Movie 2
as Zeta (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Angry Birds Movie 2
as Zeta (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Top Five
as Lisa
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Ghostbusters
as Patty Tolan
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Angry Birds Movie 2
as Zeta (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Angry Birds Movie 2
as Zeta (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Sing
as Meena's Mother (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Angry Birds Movie 2
as Zeta (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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Harvey Keitel
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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