Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3626
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Leslie Odom Jr. 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 Odom Jr. appears in 16 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Leslie. Wicked: One Wonderful Night is the clearest case: a film rated 8.2 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 drama, history, music. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Thomas Kail, Paul Dugdale, David Gordon Green and others, Leslie Odom Jr. 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.
Wicked: One Wonderful Night (2025) as Self · Hamilton (2025) as Aaron Burr · Harriet (2019) as William Still
Career snapshot
Ranked #3626 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
16
2012–2026
Career length
14 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.2
Wicked: One Wonderful Night
Average Nutevio score
6.1
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.2
Wicked: One Wonderful Night
Most frequent director
Thomas Kail
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Thomas Kail
Most common genre
Drama
9 titles
Average runtime
1h 42m
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
2010s
6.9 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Harriet, Murder on the Orient Express, Red Tails — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.9
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.9
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. Harriet, Murder on the Orient Express, Red Tails.
Most productive era
2020s
13 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 | 6.93 films | 6.16 films |
| Action | — | 5.21 film |
| Comedy | — | 7.12 films |
| Crime | 6.71 film | 6.72 films |
| Romance | — | 5.32 films |
| Horror | — | 5.81 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2012Red Tails
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Declan 'Winky' Hall.
Highest rated performance
2025Wicked: One Wonderful Night
8.2 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
2025Hamilton
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2026MISCAST26
The current state of the argument.
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.
16 of 16 films
as Aaron Burr
Directed by Thomas Kail
as William Still
Directed by Kasi Lemmons
as Lionel Toussaint
Directed by Rian Johnson
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
Aaron Burr
Hamilton (2025)
Performance score8.1
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Aaron Burr gives Leslie Odom Jr. a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Self
Wicked: One Wonderful Night (2025)
Performance score7.9
Wicked: One Wonderful Night 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
William Still
Harriet (2019)
Performance score7.6
Harriet asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. William Still is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Lionel Toussaint
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022)
Performance score7.1
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Lionel Toussaint 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 Aaron Burr
Start here. Hamilton is the clearest statement of what Leslie Odom Jr. does — accessible, 160 minutes, and rated 7.8 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.
Harriet (2019)
Keeps the drama register of Hamilton but asks for a colder reading of it.
One Night in Miami... (2020)
Keeps the drama register of Harriet but asks for a colder reading of it.
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022)
A deliberate change of key after One Night in Miami... — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Wicked: One Wonderful Night (2025)
A deliberate change of key after Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Anthony Hemingway
Director
1 film together
Notably Red Tails
Kenneth Branagh
Director
1 film together
Notably Murder on the Orient Express
Kasi Lemmons
Director
1 film together
Notably Harriet
Regina King
Director
1 film together
Notably One Night in Miami...
Takashi Doscher
Director
1 film together
Notably Only
Roman Coppola
Director
1 film together
Notably Mariah Carey's Magical Christmas Special
John Ridley
Director
1 film together
Notably Needle in a Timestack
Sia
Director
1 film together
Notably Music
Alan Taylor
Director
1 film together
Notably The Many Saints of Newark
Rian Johnson
Director
1 film together
Notably Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
David Gordon Green
Director
1 film together
Notably The Exorcist: Believer
Paul Dugdale
Director
1 film together
Notably Wicked: One Wonderful Night
Thomas Kail
Director
1 film together
Notably Hamilton
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Paul Dugdale
Director
1 film together · 8.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Wicked: One Wonderful NightThomas 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
HamiltonKasi Lemmons
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
HarrietRian Johnson
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Glass Onion: A Knives Out MysteryRegina King
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
One Night in Miami...Kenneth Branagh
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Murder on the Orient ExpressAnthony Hemingway
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Red TailsAlan Taylor
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 Many Saints of NewarkRoman Coppola
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mariah Carey's Magical Christmas SpecialDavid Gordon Green
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Exorcist: BelieverJohn Ridley
Director
1 film together · 5.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Needle in a TimestackSia
Director
1 film together · 5.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
MusicTakashi Doscher
Director
1 film together · 5.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
OnlySix 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
Wicked: One Wonderful Night
as Self
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 Aaron Burr
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Wicked: One Wonderful Night
as Self
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Wicked: One Wonderful Night
as Self
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Hamilton
as Aaron Burr
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 Odom Jr. 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
9 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
Wicked: One Wonderful Night
as Self
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
as Lionel Toussaint
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Hamilton
as Aaron Burr
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Murder on the Orient Express
as Dr. Arbuthnot
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Wicked: One Wonderful Night
as Self
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Only
as Will
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Hamilton
as Aaron Burr
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Red Tails
as Declan 'Winky' Hall
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: drama and action
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: family and comedy
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: family and comedy
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Robert Downey Jr.
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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