Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#2210
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Tasha Smith 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.
Tasha Smith appears in 11 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Tasha. Escape Room 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, comedy, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Tyler Perry, Teyana Taylor, Bilall Fallah and others, Tasha Smith 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.
Escape Room (2025) · Twinless (2025) as Charlotte · Bad Boys: Ride or Die (2024) as Theresa
Career snapshot
Ranked #2210 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
11
2006–2026
Career length
20 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.2
Escape Room
Average Nutevio score
6.1
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.2
Escape Room
Most frequent director
Tyler Perry
3 films together
Longest collaboration
3×
With Tyler Perry
Most common genre
Comedy
9 titles
Average runtime
1h 45m
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
2010s
6.8 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Dolemite Is My Name, Why Did I Get Married Too? — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
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
2010s
6.7
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. Couples Retreat, Why Did I Get Married?, You, Me and Dupree.
Most productive era
2020s
5 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 | 6.82 films | 7.01 film | 3.62 films |
| Action | — | — | 7.31 film |
| Thriller | — | — | 6.01 film |
| Comedy | 6.24 films | 6.82 films | 4.93 films |
| Crime | 7.01 film | — | 7.31 film |
| Romance | 6.13 films | 6.51 film | 0.01 film |
| Horror | — | — | 6.01 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Co-Worker (uncredited).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2025Escape Room
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
2026Why Did I Get Married Again?
The current state of the argument, as Angela.
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 Theresa
Directed by Bilall Fallah
as Jimmy's Wife
Directed by Craig Brewer
as Gayle
Directed by Chris Robinson
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
Escape Room
Escape Room (2025)
Performance score7.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. The role gives Tasha Smith a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Charlotte
Twinless (2025)
Performance score7.2
Twinless asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Charlotte is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Theresa
Bad Boys: Ride or Die (2024)
Performance score7.2
Bad Boys: Ride or Die asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Theresa is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Jimmy's Wife
Dolemite Is My Name (2019)
Performance score6.9
Dolemite Is My Name asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Jimmy's Wife 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
Start here. Escape Room is the clearest statement of what Tasha Smith does — accessible, 36 minutes, and rated 8.2 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Tasha 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.
ATL (2006)
A deliberate change of key after Escape Room — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Dolemite Is My Name (2019)
Keeps the comedy register of ATL but asks for a colder reading of it.
Bad Boys: Ride or Die (2024)
Keeps the comedy register of Dolemite Is My Name but asks for a colder reading of it.
Twinless (2025)
Keeps the comedy register of Bad Boys: Ride or Die but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Tyler Perry
Director
3 films together
Notably Why Did I Get Married Too?
Chris Robinson
Director
1 film together
Notably ATL
Anthony Russo
Director
1 film together
Notably You, Me and Dupree
Peter Billingsley
Director
1 film together
Notably Couples Retreat
Craig Brewer
Director
1 film together
Notably Dolemite Is My Name
Lee Daniels
Director
1 film together
Notably The Deliverance
Bilall Fallah
Director
1 film together
Notably Bad Boys: Ride or Die
Teyana Taylor
Director
1 film together
Notably Escape Room
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Tyler Perry
Director
3 films together · 4.3 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Why Did I Get Married Too?Teyana Taylor
Director
1 film together · 8.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Escape RoomBilall Fallah
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Bad Boys: Ride or DieCraig Brewer
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Dolemite Is My NameChris Robinson
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
ATLLee Daniels
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The DeliverancePeter Billingsley
Director
1 film together · 5.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Couples RetreatAnthony Russo
Director
1 film together · 5.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
You, Me and DupreeSix 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
Bad Boys: Ride or Die
as Theresa
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
ATL
as Gayle
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Escape Room
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
You, Me and Dupree
as Co-Worker (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Escape Room
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. Tasha Smith 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
20 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
Escape Room
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Bad Boys: Ride or Die
as Theresa
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
ATL
as Gayle
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Escape Room
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Bad Boys: Ride or Die
as Theresa
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Bad Boys: Ride or Die
as Theresa
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
ATL
as Gayle
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Twinless
as Charlotte
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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