Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#1376
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Brett Gelman 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.
Brett Gelman appears in 16 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Brett. Haunted Heist is the clearest case: a film rated 9.7 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 documentary, comedy, horror. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Lil Rel Howery, Josh Greenbaum, Josh Gordon and others, Brett Gelman 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.
Haunted Heist (2026) as Alton Dempsey · One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5 (2026) as Self - Murray Bauman · Strays (2023) as Willy
Career snapshot
Ranked #1376 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
16
2007–2026
Career length
19 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
9.7
Haunted Heist
Average Nutevio score
6.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
9.7
Haunted Heist
Most frequent director
Lil Rel Howery
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Lil Rel Howery
Most common genre
Comedy
10 titles
Average runtime
1h 42m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.1
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
6.7
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
7.2 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5, Haunted Heist, Boy Kills World — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
7.2
Across 9 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
7.2
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. Watching the Detectives.
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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.34 films | 6.52 films |
| Action | — | 6.02 films | 6.63 films |
| Thriller | — | — | 6.82 films |
| Comedy | 6.31 film | 6.34 films | 7.55 films |
| Crime | — | — | 6.71 film |
| Romance | 6.31 film | — | — |
| Horror | — | — | 9.71 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Glenn.
First Nutevio masterpiece · Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2026Haunted Heist
The first film here to clear 9.0 on our scale — a threshold fewer than one film in ten reaches. 9.7 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. The current state of the argument, as Alton Dempsey.
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.
16 of 16 films
as Alton Dempsey
Directed by Lil Rel Howery
as Willy
Directed by Josh Greenbaum
as Alistair Grumps
Directed by Josh Gordon
as Victor Rykov
Directed by Stefano Sollima
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
Alton Dempsey
Haunted Heist (2026)
Performance score9.5
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Alton Dempsey gives Brett Gelman a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Willy
Strays (2023)
Performance score7.3
Strays asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Willy is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Self - Murray Bauman
One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5 (2026)
Performance score7.2
One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self - Murray Bauman is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Alistair Grumps
Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile (2022)
Performance score7.1
Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Alistair Grumps 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 Alton Dempsey
Start here. Haunted Heist is the clearest statement of what Brett Gelman does — accessible, 87 minutes, and rated 9.7 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Brett 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.
Tom Clancy's Without Remorse (2021)
A deliberate change of key after Haunted Heist — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile (2022)
A deliberate change of key after Tom Clancy's Without Remorse — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Strays (2023)
Keeps the comedy register of Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile but asks for a colder reading of it.
One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5 (2026)
A deliberate change of key after Strays — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Adam McKay
Director
1 film together
Notably The Other Guys
Ruben Fleischer
Director
1 film together
Notably 30 Minutes or Less
Craig Johnson
Director
1 film together
Notably Wilson
James Franco
Director
1 film together
Notably The Disaster Artist
Lauren Miller Rogen
Director
1 film together
Notably Like Father
Stefano Sollima
Director
1 film together
Notably Tom Clancy's Without Remorse
Peter Sollett
Director
1 film together
Notably Metal Lords
Josh Gordon
Director
1 film together
Notably Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile
Josh Greenbaum
Director
1 film together
Notably Strays
Lil Rel Howery
Director
1 film together
Notably Haunted Heist
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Lil Rel Howery
Director
1 film together · 9.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Haunted HeistJosh Greenbaum
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
StraysJames Franco
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Disaster ArtistJosh Gordon
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Lyle, Lyle, CrocodileStefano Sollima
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Tom Clancy's Without RemorsePeter Sollett
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Metal LordsAdam McKay
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Other GuysLauren Miller Rogen
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Like FatherCraig Johnson
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
WilsonRuben Fleischer
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
30 Minutes or LessSix 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
Haunted Heist
as Alton Dempsey
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Arlo the Alligator Boy
as Marcellus (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
Haunted Heist
as Alton Dempsey
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5
as Self - Murray Bauman
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Haunted Heist
as Alton Dempsey
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. Brett Gelman 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
10 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
Haunted Heist
as Alton Dempsey
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Haunted Heist
as Alton Dempsey
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Arlo the Alligator Boy
as Marcellus (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Boy Kills World
as Gideon Van Der Koy
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Haunted Heist
as Alton Dempsey
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Surrounded
as Mr. Fields
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Arlo the Alligator Boy
as Marcellus (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Boy Kills World
as Gideon Van Der Koy
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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