Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#14154
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Samson Kayo 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.
Samson Kayo appears in 8 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Samson. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is the clearest case: a film rated 8.3 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 action, drama, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Joseph Kosinski, Kristin Scott Thomas, Joel Crawford and others, Samson Kayo 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.
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022) as Baby Bear (voice) · F1 (2025) as Cash · Boxing Day (2021) as Joseph
Career snapshot
Ranked #14154 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
8
2020–2025
Career length
5 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.3
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.2
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
Most frequent director
Joseph Kosinski
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Joseph Kosinski
Most common genre
Comedy
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 43m
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
2020s
6.6 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. F1, My Mother's Wedding, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
6.6
Across 8 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
6.6
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2020s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. F1, My Mother's Wedding, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.
Most productive era
2020s
8 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 | 2020s |
|---|---|
| Drama | 7.12 films |
| Action | 7.91 film |
| Comedy | 6.47 films |
| Romance | 6.71 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2020Dolittle
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Pirate.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2022Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
8.3 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
The current state of the argument, as Steve.
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.
8 of 8 films
as Baby Bear (voice)
Directed by Joel Crawford
as Pyrex Flask
Directed by Alice Mathias
as Joseph
Directed by Aml Ameen
as Pirate
Directed by Stephen Gaghan
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
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The defining work
#1
Baby Bear (voice)
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022)
Performance score8.0
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Baby Bear (voice) gives Samson Kayo a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Cash
F1 (2025)
Performance score7.7
F1 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Cash is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Pyrex Flask
Death to 2020 (2020)
Performance score6.7
Death to 2020 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Pyrex Flask is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Joseph
Boxing Day (2021)
Performance score6.6
Boxing Day asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Joseph 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 Baby Bear (voice)
Start here. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is the clearest statement of what Samson Kayo does — accessible, 103 minutes, and rated 8.3 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Samson 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.
Death to 2020 (2020)
Keeps the comedy register of Puss in Boots: The Last Wish but asks for a colder reading of it.
Dolittle (2020)
Keeps the comedy register of Death to 2020 but asks for a colder reading of it.
Boxing Day (2021)
Keeps the comedy register of Dolittle but asks for a colder reading of it.
F1 (2025)
A deliberate change of key after Boxing Day — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Alice Mathias
Director
1 film together
Notably Death to 2020
Stephen Gaghan
Director
1 film together
Notably Dolittle
Aml Ameen
Director
1 film together
Notably Boxing Day
Josh Ruben
Director
1 film together
Notably Death to 2021
Judd Apatow
Director
1 film together
Notably The Bubble
Joel Crawford
Director
1 film together
Notably Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
Kristin Scott Thomas
Director
1 film together
Notably My Mother's Wedding
Joseph Kosinski
Director
1 film together
Notably F1
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Joel Crawford
Director
1 film together · 8.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Puss in Boots: The Last WishJoseph Kosinski
Director
1 film together · 7.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
F1Aml Ameen
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Boxing DayStephen Gaghan
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
DolittleAlice Mathias
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Death to 2020Kristin Scott Thomas
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
My Mother's WeddingJosh Ruben
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Death to 2021Judd Apatow
Director
1 film together · 4.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The BubbleSix 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
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
as Baby Bear (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
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
as Baby Bear (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
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
as Baby Bear (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Dolittle
as Pirate
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
as Baby Bear (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. Samson Kayo 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.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
7 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
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
as Baby Bear (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
F1
as Cash
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
as Baby Bear (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
as Baby Bear (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
F1
as Cash
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
F1
as Cash
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
as Baby Bear (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
as Baby Bear (voice)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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