Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3024
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Lewis Black represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 38 years in, and Lewis is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Lewis Black appears in 11 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Lewis. Inside Out is the clearest case: a film rated 8.1 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 comedy, adventure, family. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Donick Cary, Ash Brannon, Pete Docter and others, Lewis Black 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.
Inside Out (2015) as Anger (voice) · Inside Out 2 (2024) as Anger (voice) · Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) as Paul
Career snapshot
Ranked #3024 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
11
1986–2024
Career length
38 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.1
Inside Out
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.9
Inside Out
Most frequent director
Donick Cary
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Donick Cary
Most common genre
Comedy
9 titles
Average runtime
1h 38m
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
6.8
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
1980s
7.5 average MV
The 1980s are where the work and the material meet. Hannah and Her Sisters — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1980s
7.5
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1980s
7.5
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1980s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Hannah and Her Sisters.
Most productive era
2020s
4 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 | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.51 film | 7.21 film | — | 8.11 film | — |
| Thriller | — | — | 5.91 film | — | — |
| Comedy | 7.51 film | — | 6.22 films | 6.63 films | 6.43 films |
| Romance | — | — | 5.91 film | — | — |
| Horror | — | 7.21 film | — | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Paul.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2015Inside Out
8.1 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
2024Inside Out 2
The current state of the argument, as Anger (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.
11 of 11 films
as Anger (voice)
Directed by Pete Docter
as Anger (voice)
Directed by Unknown
as Jacob's Doctor
Directed by Adrian Lyne
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
Anger (voice)
Inside Out (2015)
Performance score8.1
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Anger (voice) gives Lewis Black a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Anger (voice)
Inside Out 2 (2024)
Performance score7.7
Inside Out 2 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Anger (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Paul
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
Performance score7.3
Hannah and Her Sisters asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Paul is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Downwind
Downwind (2023)
Performance score7.2
Downwind asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. The role 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 Anger (voice)
Start here. Inside Out is the clearest statement of what Lewis Black does — accessible, 95 minutes, and rated 8.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Lewis 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.
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
Keeps the comedy register of Inside Out but asks for a colder reading of it.
Jacob's Ladder (1990)
Keeps the drama register of Hannah and Her Sisters but asks for a colder reading of it.
Downwind (2023)
A deliberate change of key after Jacob's Ladder — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Inside Out 2 (2024)
Same director as Downwind, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Woody Allen
Director
1 film together
Notably Hannah and Her Sisters
Adrian Lyne
Director
1 film together
Notably Jacob's Ladder
Barry Levinson
Director
1 film together
Notably Man of the Year
Steve Pink
Director
1 film together
Notably Accepted
Pete Docter
Director
1 film together
Notably Inside Out
Ash Brannon
Director
1 film together
Notably Rock Dog
Donick Cary
Director
1 film together
Notably Have a Good Trip: Adventures in Psychedelics
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Pete Docter
Director
1 film together · 8.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Inside OutWoody Allen
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hannah and Her SistersAdrian Lyne
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Jacob's LadderDonick Cary
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Have a Good Trip: Adventures in PsychedelicsSteve Pink
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
AcceptedAsh Brannon
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Rock DogBarry Levinson
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Man of the YearSix 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
Inside Out
as Anger (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
Inside Out
as Anger (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
Inside Out
as Anger (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Jacob's Ladder
as Jacob's Doctor
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Inside Out
as Anger (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. Lewis Black 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
38 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
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
Inside Out
as Anger (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Jacob's Ladder
as Jacob's Doctor
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Rock Dog
as Linnux (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Jacob's Ladder
as Jacob's Doctor
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Inside Out
as Anger (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Inside Out
as Anger (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Inside Out
as Anger (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Inside Out
as Anger (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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Bonnie Hunt
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Edward Norton
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
Jamie Harris
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Tom Wilkinson
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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