Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#6044
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Usher represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 28 years in, and Usher is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Usher appears in 17 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Usher. Thriller 40 is the clearest case: a film rated 8.7 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 comedy, crime, documentary. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Beth McCarthy-Miller, Nelson George, Justin Simien and others, Usher 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.
Thriller 40 (2023) as Self · Let's Go Crazy: The Grammy Salute to Prince (2020) as Self · Incredibles 2 (2018) as Additional Voices (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #6044 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
17
1998–2026
Career length
28 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.7
Thriller 40
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.7
Thriller 40
Most frequent director
Beth McCarthy-Miller
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Beth McCarthy-Miller
Most common genre
Comedy
7 titles
Average runtime
2h 4m
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
6.6
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
6.6 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Incredibles 2, Hands of Stone, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.6
Across 5 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.6
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1990s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. She's All That, The Faculty.
Most productive era
2020s
9 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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.11 film | 6.61 film | — |
| Action | — | — | 6.82 films | — |
| Thriller | — | — | 6.01 film | — |
| Comedy | 6.31 film | 6.11 film | 6.33 films | 5.92 films |
| Crime | — | 6.11 film | 6.31 film | 5.11 film |
| Romance | 6.31 film | 6.11 film | 6.01 film | — |
| Horror | 6.71 film | — | — | 5.71 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1998The Faculty
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Gabe Santora.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2023Thriller 40
8.7 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 Self - Roaster.
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.
17 of 17 films
as Self
Directed by Nelson George
as Additional Voices (voice)
Directed by Brad Bird
as Sugar Ray Leonard
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
Self
Thriller 40 (2023)
Performance score8.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Self gives Usher a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Self
Let's Go Crazy: The Grammy Salute to Prince (2020)
Performance score7.7
Let's Go Crazy: The Grammy Salute to Prince 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 movie#3
Additional Voices (voice)
Incredibles 2 (2018)
Performance score7.3
Incredibles 2 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Additional Voices (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Self
One World: Together at Home (2020)
Performance score7.0
One World: Together at Home 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 Self
Start here. Thriller 40 is the clearest statement of what Usher does — accessible, 89 minutes, and rated 8.7 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Usher 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.
Hands of Stone (2016)
A deliberate change of key after Thriller 40 — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Incredibles 2 (2018)
A deliberate change of key after Hands of Stone — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Let's Go Crazy: The Grammy Salute to Prince (2020)
A deliberate change of key after Incredibles 2 — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
One World: Together at Home (2020)
Same director as Let's Go Crazy: The Grammy Salute to Prince, 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.
Robert Rodriguez
Director
1 film together
Notably The Faculty
Robert Iscove
Director
1 film together
Notably She's All That
Ron Underwood
Director
1 film together
Notably In The Mix
Robert Luketic
Director
1 film together
Notably Killers
James Bobin
Director
1 film together
Notably Muppets Most Wanted
Jorma Taccone
Director
1 film together
Notably Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
Brad Bird
Director
1 film together
Notably Incredibles 2
Matthew Akers
Director
1 film together
Notably David Blaine: The Magic Way
Justin Simien
Director
1 film together
Notably Bad Hair
Nelson George
Director
1 film together
Notably Thriller 40
Beth McCarthy-Miller
Director
1 film together
Notably The Roast of Kevin Hart
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Nelson George
Director
1 film together · 8.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Thriller 40Brad Bird
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Incredibles 2Robert Rodriguez
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The FacultyMatthew Akers
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
David Blaine: The Magic WayJorma Taccone
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Popstar: Never Stop Never StoppingJames Bobin
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Muppets Most WantedRobert Iscove
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
She's All ThatBeth McCarthy-Miller
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Roast of Kevin HartRon Underwood
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
In The MixRobert Luketic
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
KillersJustin Simien
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Bad HairSix 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
Thriller 40
as Self
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Let's Go Crazy: The Grammy Salute to Prince
as Self
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Thriller 40
as Self
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Incredibles 2
as Additional Voices (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Thriller 40
as Self
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. Usher 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
28 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
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
Thriller 40
as Self
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Thriller 40
as Self
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Let's Go Crazy: The Grammy Salute to Prince
as Self
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Thriller 40
as Self
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Incredibles 2
as Additional Voices (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Incredibles 2
as Additional Voices (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
In The Mix
as Darrell Williams
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Faculty
as Gabe Santora
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
Which Usher performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
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Reference
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