Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#13859
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
will.i.am 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.
will.i.am appears in 11 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without will.i.am. The Groove Under the Groove is the clearest case: a film rated 8.0 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 comedy, adventure, family. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Carlos Saldanha, Shawn Levy, Gavin Hood and others, will.i.am 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.
The Groove Under the Groove (2026) · Sergio Mendes in the Key of Joy (2021) as Self · Rio (2011) as Pedro (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #13859 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
11
2005–2027
Career length
22 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.0
The Groove Under the Groove
Average Nutevio score
5.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.0
The Groove Under the Groove
Most frequent director
Carlos Saldanha
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Carlos Saldanha
Most common genre
Adventure
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 28m
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
6.2
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
2000s
6.1 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Arthur and the Revenge of Maltazard, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.1
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.0
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. X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Arthur and the Revenge of Maltazard, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa.
Most productive era
2000s
4 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Action | 6.41 film | 6.11 film | — |
| Comedy | 6.12 films | 6.53 films | 0.01 film |
| Crime | 5.51 film | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2005Be Cool
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Will.i.am.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2026The Groove Under the Groove
8.0 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
The current state of the argument, as Pierre (voice).
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
Directed by Unknown
as Pedro (voice)
Directed by Carlos Saldanha
as Pedro (voice)
Directed by Carlos Saldanha
as Moto Moto (voice)
Directed by Eric Darnell
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
The Groove Under the Groove
The Groove Under the Groove (2026)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. The role gives will.i.am a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Self
Sergio Mendes in the Key of Joy (2021)
Performance score7.7
Sergio Mendes in the Key of Joy 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
Pedro (voice)
Rio 2 (2014)
Performance score7.0
Rio 2 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Pedro (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Pedro (voice)
Rio (2011)
Performance score7.0
Rio asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Pedro (voice) 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. The Groove Under the Groove is the clearest statement of what will.i.am does — accessible, 90 minutes, and rated 8.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet will.i.am 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.
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008)
A deliberate change of key after The Groove Under the Groove — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Rio (2011)
Keeps the comedy register of Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa but asks for a colder reading of it.
Rio 2 (2014)
Same director as Rio, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Sergio Mendes in the Key of Joy (2021)
A deliberate change of key after Rio 2 — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Carlos Saldanha
Director
2 films together
Notably Rio
F. Gary Gray
Director
1 film together
Notably Be Cool
Eric Darnell
Director
1 film together
Notably Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
Luc Besson
Director
1 film together
Notably Arthur and the Revenge of Maltazard
Gavin Hood
Director
1 film together
Notably X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Shawn Levy
Director
1 film together
Notably Date Night
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Carlos Saldanha
Director
2 films together · 6.7 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
RioEric Darnell
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Madagascar: Escape 2 AfricaGavin Hood
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
X-Men Origins: WolverineShawn Levy
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Date NightLuc Besson
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Arthur and the Revenge of MaltazardF. Gary Gray
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Be CoolSix 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
The Groove Under the Groove
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Arthur and the Revenge of Maltazard
as Snow (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
The Groove Under the Groove
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Be Cool
as Will.i.am
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Groove Under the Groove
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. will.i.am 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
22 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.
Adventure Legend
Awarded
7 catalogue titles in adventure, 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
The Groove Under the Groove
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Groove Under the Groove
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Arthur and the Revenge of Maltazard
as Snow (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Arthur and the Revenge of Maltazard
as Snow (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Groove Under the Groove
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
as John Wraith
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Rio 2
as Pedro (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
as Moto Moto (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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