Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#1171
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Phylicia Rashād 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.
Phylicia Rashād appears in 16 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Phylicia. Soul 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 romance, music, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with David Ayer, Michael B. Jordan, James Adolphus and others, Phylicia Rashād 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.
Soul (2020) as Libba Gardner (voice) · Chadwick Boseman: A Tribute for a King (2020) as Self - Actress · Between the World and Me (2020) as Self
Career snapshot
Ranked #1171 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
16
2015–2025
Career length
10 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.2
Soul
Average Nutevio score
6.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.1
Chadwick Boseman: A Tribute for a King
Most frequent director
David Ayer
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With David Ayer
Most common genre
Drama
9 titles
Average runtime
1h 41m
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
6.4
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
7.0 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Creed II, Tour de Pharmacy, Creed — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.0
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
7.0
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. Creed II, Tour de Pharmacy, Creed.
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 | 7.22 films | 7.47 films |
| Action | 7.01 film | 7.22 films |
| Thriller | — | 7.22 films |
| Comedy | 6.71 film | 0.01 film |
| Crime | — | 7.31 film |
| Romance | — | 7.51 film |
| Horror | — | 6.41 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2015Creed
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Mary Anne Creed.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2020Soul
8.2 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
2025Ruth & Boaz
The current state of the argument, as Naomi.
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 Libba Gardner (voice)
Directed by Pete Docter
as Naomi
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
Libba Gardner (voice)
Soul (2020)
Performance score7.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Libba Gardner (voice) gives Phylicia Rashād a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Naomi
Ruth & Boaz (2025)
Performance score7.8
Ruth & Boaz asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Naomi is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Self - Actress
Chadwick Boseman: A Tribute for a King (2020)
Performance score7.8
Chadwick Boseman: A Tribute for a King asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self - Actress is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Self
Between the World and Me (2020)
Performance score7.7
Between the World and Me 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 movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Libba Gardner (voice)
Start here. Soul is the clearest statement of what Phylicia Rashād does — accessible, 101 minutes, and rated 8.2 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Phylicia 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.
Creed (2015)
Keeps the drama register of Soul but asks for a colder reading of it.
Chadwick Boseman: A Tribute for a King (2020)
A deliberate change of key after Creed — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Between the World and Me (2020)
Same director as Chadwick Boseman: A Tribute for a King, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Ruth & Boaz (2025)
Same director as Between the World and Me, 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.
Ryan Coogler
Director
1 film together
Notably Creed
Jake Szymanski
Director
1 film together
Notably Tour de Pharmacy
Steven Caple Jr.
Director
1 film together
Notably Creed II
Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour, Jr.
Director
1 film together
Notably Black Box
Tyler Perry
Director
1 film together
Notably A Fall from Grace
Pete Docter
Director
1 film together
Notably Soul
Lin-Manuel Miranda
Director
1 film together
Notably tick, tick... BOOM!
Lonny Price
Director
1 film together
Notably Show of Titles
James Adolphus
Director
1 film together
Notably Being Mary Tyler Moore
Michael B. Jordan
Director
1 film together
Notably Creed III
David Ayer
Director
1 film together
Notably The Beekeeper
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Pete Docter
Director
1 film together · 8.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SoulLin-Manuel Miranda
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
tick, tick... BOOM!Ryan Coogler
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
CreedDavid Ayer
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The BeekeeperMichael B. Jordan
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Creed IIITyler Perry
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Fall from GraceSteven Caple Jr.
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Creed IIJames Adolphus
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Being Mary Tyler MooreJake Szymanski
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Tour de PharmacyEmmanuel Osei-Kuffour, Jr.
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Black BoxLonny Price
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Show of TitlesSix 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
Soul
as Libba Gardner (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
Soul
as Libba Gardner (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
Soul
as Libba Gardner (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
tick, tick... BOOM!
as "Sunday" Legend #12
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Soul
as Libba Gardner (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. Phylicia Rashād 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
Soul
as Libba Gardner (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Beekeeper
as Eloise Parker
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Ruth & Boaz
as Naomi
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
A Fall from Grace
as Sarah
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Beekeeper
as Eloise Parker
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Beekeeper
as Eloise Parker
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Soul
as Libba Gardner (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Soul
as Libba Gardner (voice)
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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