Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#24018
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Yancy Butler represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 33 years in, and Yancy is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Yancy Butler appears in 7 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Yancy. Kick-Ass is the clearest case: a film rated 7.1 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 drama, thriller, horror. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Bruce Reisman, Don Michael Paul, Jeff Wadlow and others, Yancy Butler 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.
Kick-Ass (2010) as Angie D'Amico · The Accursed (2021) as Hana · Hard Target (1993) as Natasha Binder
Career snapshot
Ranked #24018 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
7
1993–2026
Career length
33 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.1
Kick-Ass
Average Nutevio score
5.3
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.1
Kick-Ass
Most frequent director
Bruce Reisman
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Bruce Reisman
Most common genre
Horror
3 titles
Average runtime
1h 36m
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
1990s
6.5 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Hard Target — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
6.5
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
6.5
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. Hard Target.
Most productive era
2010s
3 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 | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | — | 0.01 film |
| Action | 6.51 film | 6.82 films | — |
| Thriller | 6.51 film | — | 0.01 film |
| Crime | 6.51 film | 6.82 films | — |
| Horror | — | 5.21 film | 5.82 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1993Hard Target
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Natasha Binder.
Highest rated performance
2010Kick-Ass
7.1 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
2021The Accursed
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2026Married Alive
The current state of the argument, as Missy.
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.
7 of 7 films
as Angie D'Amico
Directed by Matthew Vaughn
as Natasha Binder
Directed by John Woo
as Missy
Directed by Bruce Reisman
as Detective Sandra Fitzgerald
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
Hana
The Accursed (2021)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Hana gives Yancy Butler a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Angie D'Amico
Kick-Ass (2010)
Performance score7.0
Kick-Ass asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Angie D'Amico is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Natasha Binder
Hard Target (1993)
Performance score6.7
Hard Target asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Natasha Binder is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Missy
Married Alive (2026)
Performance score6.5
Married Alive asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Missy 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 Hana
Start here. The Accursed is the clearest statement of what Yancy Butler does — accessible, 85 minutes, and rated 6.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Yancy 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.
Hard Target (1993)
A deliberate change of key after The Accursed — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Kick-Ass (2010)
Keeps the action register of Hard Target but asks for a colder reading of it.
Init!ation (2021)
A deliberate change of key after Kick-Ass — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Married Alive (2026)
A deliberate change of key after Init!ation — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
John Woo
Director
1 film together
Notably Hard Target
Matthew Vaughn
Director
1 film together
Notably Kick-Ass
Jeff Wadlow
Director
1 film together
Notably Kick-Ass 2
Don Michael Paul
Director
1 film together
Notably Lake Placid: The Final Chapter
Bruce Reisman
Director
1 film together
Notably Married Alive
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Matthew Vaughn
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Kick-AssJohn Woo
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hard TargetJeff Wadlow
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Kick-Ass 2Don Michael Paul
Director
1 film together · 5.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Lake Placid: The Final ChapterBruce Reisman
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Married AliveSix 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
Kick-Ass
as Angie D'Amico
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Married Alive
as Missy
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Kick-Ass
as Angie D'Amico
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Kick-Ass
as Angie D'Amico
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Accursed
as Hana
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. Yancy Butler 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
33 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.
Horror Legend
Awarded
3 catalogue titles in horror, 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
Kick-Ass
as Angie D'Amico
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Kick-Ass
as Angie D'Amico
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Married Alive
as Missy
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Init!ation
as Detective Sandra Fitzgerald
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Kick-Ass
as Angie D'Amico
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Kick-Ass 2
as Mrs. D'Amico
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Kick-Ass 2
as Mrs. D'Amico
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Lake Placid: The Final Chapter
as Reba
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Christian Bale
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Have your say
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Reference
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