Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#26394
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Naturi Naughton is the performer our scores keep defending against the popular vote — a career of films that get better the further you stand from their release week.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Naturi Naughton appears in 6 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Naturi. Emperor is the clearest case: a film rated 6.9 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 romance, drama, war. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Erik White, George Tillman Jr., Naturi Naughton 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.
Emperor (2020) as Sarah Green · Notorious (2009) as Lil' Kim · Really Love (2020) as Sicily Richmond
Career snapshot
Ranked #26394 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
6
2009–2025
Career length
16 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.9
Emperor
Average Nutevio score
6.3
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.6
Emperor
Most frequent director
Erik White
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Erik White
Most common genre
Drama
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 39m
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
2000s
6.8 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Notorious — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.8
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
7.0
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. Notorious.
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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.81 film | — | 6.34 films |
| Comedy | — | 6.01 film | — |
| Romance | — | — | 6.22 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Career peak
2009Notorious
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Lil' Kim. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
2020Emperor
6.9 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
2025Eric Jerome Dickey's Friends and Lovers Part I
The current state of the argument, as Debra.
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.
6 of 6 films
as Lil' Kim
Directed by George Tillman Jr.
as Sicily Richmond
Directed by Unknown
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
Lil' Kim
Notorious (2009)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Lil' Kim gives Naturi Naughton a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Sarah Green
Emperor (2020)
Performance score7.1
Emperor asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Sarah Green is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Sicily Richmond
Really Love (2020)
Performance score6.6
Really Love asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Sicily Richmond is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Debra
Eric Jerome Dickey's Friends and Lovers Part II (2025)
Performance score6.5
Eric Jerome Dickey's Friends and Lovers Part II asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Debra 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 Lil' Kim
Start here. Notorious is the clearest statement of what Naturi Naughton does — accessible, 122 minutes, and rated 6.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Naturi 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.
Emperor (2020)
Keeps the drama register of Notorious but asks for a colder reading of it.
Really Love (2020)
Same director as Emperor, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Eric Jerome Dickey's Friends and Lovers Part II (2025)
Same director as Really Love, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Eric Jerome Dickey's Friends and Lovers Part I (2025)
Same director as Eric Jerome Dickey's Friends and Lovers Part II, 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.
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
George Tillman Jr.
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
NotoriousErik White
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Lottery TicketSix 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
Notorious
as Lil' Kim
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Notorious
as Lil' Kim
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Emperor
as Sarah Green
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Emperor
as Sarah Green
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Notorious
as Lil' Kim
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. Naturi Naughton 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
5 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
Emperor
as Sarah Green
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Emperor
as Sarah Green
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Eric Jerome Dickey's Friends and Lovers Part II
as Debra
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Notorious
as Lil' Kim
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Emperor
as Sarah Green
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Emperor
as Sarah Green
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Really Love
as Sicily Richmond
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Eric Jerome Dickey's Friends and Lovers Part II
as Debra
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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