Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#23411
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Sammy Davis Jr. represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 66 years in, and Sammy is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Sammy Davis Jr. appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Sammy. Rat Pack is the clearest case: a film rated 9.0 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 music, documentary, action. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Baz Luhrmann, Andrew McCarthy, Jeffrey Schwarz and others, Sammy Davis 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.
Rat Pack (2022) as Self (archive footage) · EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert (2026) as Self (archive footage) · Dean Martin: King of Cool (2021) as Self (archive footage)
Career snapshot
Ranked #23411 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
1960–2026
Career length
66 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
9.0
Rat Pack
Average Nutevio score
6.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
9.0
Rat Pack
Most frequent director
Baz Luhrmann
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Baz Luhrmann
Most common genre
Documentary
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 35m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.9
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
7.0
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
6.8 average MV
The 1980s are where the work and the material meet. Koyaanisqatsi, The Cannonball Run — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1980s
6.8
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1980s
7.0
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1960s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Sweet Charity, Ocean's Eleven.
Most productive era
2020s
6 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 | 1960s | 1980s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.61 film | — | — |
| Action | — | 6.31 film | — |
| Thriller | 6.41 film | — | — |
| Comedy | 6.52 films | 6.31 film | — |
| Crime | 6.41 film | — | — |
| Romance | 6.61 film | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1960Ocean's Eleven
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Josh Howard.
First Nutevio masterpiece · Highest rated performance · Career peak
2022Rat Pack
The first film here to clear 9.0 on our scale — a threshold fewer than one film in ten reaches. 9.0 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
2026EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert
The current state of the argument, as Self (archive footage).
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.
10 of 10 films
as Self (archive footage)
Directed by Baz Luhrmann
as Self (archive footage)
Directed by Godfrey Reggio
as Josh Howard
Directed by Lewis Milestone
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
Self (archive footage)
Rat Pack (2022)
Performance score8.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Self (archive footage) gives Sammy Davis Jr. a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Self (archive footage)
EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert (2026)
Performance score8.0
EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self (archive footage) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Self (archive footage)
Koyaanisqatsi (1983)
Performance score7.5
Koyaanisqatsi asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self (archive footage) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Self (archive footage)
Dean Martin: King of Cool (2021)
Performance score7.4
Dean Martin: King of Cool asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self (archive footage) 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 Self (archive footage)
Start here. Rat Pack is the clearest statement of what Sammy Davis Jr. does — accessible, 0 minutes, and rated 9.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Sammy 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.
Ocean's Eleven (1960)
A deliberate change of key after Rat Pack — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Koyaanisqatsi (1983)
A deliberate change of key after Ocean's Eleven — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Dean Martin: King of Cool (2021)
Keeps the documentary register of Koyaanisqatsi but asks for a colder reading of it.
EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert (2026)
Keeps the documentary register of Dean Martin: King of Cool but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Lewis Milestone
Director
1 film together
Notably Ocean's Eleven
Bob Fosse
Director
1 film together
Notably Sweet Charity
Hal Needham
Director
1 film together
Notably The Cannonball Run
Godfrey Reggio
Director
1 film together
Notably Koyaanisqatsi
Sacha Jenkins
Director
1 film together
Notably Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues
Jeffrey Schwarz
Director
1 film together
Notably Commitment to Life
Andrew McCarthy
Director
1 film together
Notably BRATS
Baz Luhrmann
Director
1 film together
Notably EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Baz Luhrmann
Director
1 film together · 8.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
EPiC: Elvis Presley in ConcertGodfrey Reggio
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
KoyaanisqatsiBob Fosse
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Sweet CharitySacha Jenkins
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Louis Armstrong's Black & BluesLewis Milestone
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Ocean's ElevenHal Needham
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 Cannonball RunAndrew McCarthy
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BRATSJeffrey Schwarz
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Commitment to LifeSix 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
EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert
as Self (archive footage)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Sweet Charity
as Big Daddy
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Rat Pack
as Self (archive footage)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues
as Self (archive footage)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Rat Pack
as Self (archive footage)
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. Sammy Davis 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.
Career Achievement
Awarded
66 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.
Documentary Legend
Awarded
7 catalogue titles in documentary, 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
Rat Pack
as Self (archive footage)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Rat Pack
as Self (archive footage)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Sweet Charity
as Big Daddy
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Ocean's Eleven
as Josh Howard
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Rat Pack
as Self (archive footage)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Cannonball Run
as Fenderbaum
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Sweet Charity
as Big Daddy
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Cannonball Run
as Fenderbaum
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
Built a career in the same territory: family and comedy
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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