Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#2080
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Dave Foley represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 27 years in, and Dave is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Dave Foley appears in 15 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Dave. Toy Story 2 is the clearest case: a film rated 7.8 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, comedy. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for comedy, fantasy, family. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Shane Zalvin, Liz W. Garcia, Michael Cusack and others, Dave Foley 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.
Toy Story 2 (1999) as Flik the Ant (voice) (uncredited) · Cars (2006) as Flik Car (voice) · South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999) as The Baldwin Brothers (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #2080 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
15
1998–2025
Career length
27 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.8
Toy Story 2
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.6
Toy Story 2
Most frequent director
John Lasseter
3 films together
Longest collaboration
3×
With John Lasseter
Most common genre
Comedy
15 titles
Average runtime
1h 27m
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
6.6
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
1990s
7.0 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Toy Story 2, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Blast from the Past — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
7.0
Across 5 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
6.9
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. Toy Story 2, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Blast from the Past.
Most productive era
1990s
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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.81 film | — | — | — |
| Action | — | 5.82 films | — | — |
| Comedy | 7.05 films | 6.34 films | 6.73 films | 6.33 films |
| Romance | 6.81 film | — | 6.31 film | — |
| Horror | — | — | — | 6.41 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Career peak
1998A Bug's Life
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Flik (voice). Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
1999Toy Story 2
7.8 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
2025Prep & Landing: The Snowball Protocol
The current state of the argument, as Wayne (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.
15 of 15 films
as Flik (voice)
Directed by John Lasseter
as Wayne (voice)
Directed by Shane Zalvin
as Flik the Ant (voice) (uncredited)
Directed by John Lasseter
as Flik Car (voice)
Directed by John Lasseter
as The Baldwin Brothers (voice)
Directed by Trey Parker
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
Flik (voice)
A Bug's Life (1998)
Performance score7.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Flik (voice) gives Dave Foley a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Wayne (voice)
Prep & Landing: The Snowball Protocol (2025)
Performance score7.6
Prep & Landing: The Snowball Protocol asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Wayne (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Flik the Ant (voice) (uncredited)
Toy Story 2 (1999)
Performance score7.6
Toy Story 2 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Flik the Ant (voice) (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Flik Car (voice)
Cars (2006)
Performance score7.1
Cars asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Flik Car (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
as Flik (voice)
Start here. A Bug's Life is the clearest statement of what Dave Foley does — accessible, 95 minutes, and rated 7.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Dave 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.
Toy Story 2 (1999)
Same director as A Bug's Life, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999)
Keeps the comedy register of Toy Story 2 but asks for a colder reading of it.
Cars (2006)
Keeps the comedy register of South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut but asks for a colder reading of it.
Prep & Landing: The Snowball Protocol (2025)
Keeps the comedy register of Cars but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
John Lasseter
Director
3 films together
Notably Toy Story 2
Andrew Fleming
Director
1 film together
Notably Dick
Hugh Wilson
Director
1 film together
Notably Blast from the Past
Trey Parker
Director
1 film together
Notably South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
Casey La Scala
Director
1 film together
Notably Grind
Mitch Rouse
Director
1 film together
Notably Employee of the Month
Mike Mitchell
Director
1 film together
Notably Sky High
Peter Segal
Director
1 film together
Notably Second Act
Michael Cusack
Director
1 film together
Notably The Paloni Show! Halloween Special!
Liz W. Garcia
Director
1 film together
Notably Space Cadet
Shane Zalvin
Director
1 film together
Notably Prep & Landing: The Snowball Protocol
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
John Lasseter
Director
3 films together · 7.4 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Toy Story 2Trey Parker
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
South Park: Bigger, Longer & UncutShane Zalvin
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Prep & Landing: The Snowball ProtocolHugh Wilson
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Blast from the PastMichael Cusack
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Paloni Show! Halloween Special!Peter Segal
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Second ActMike Mitchell
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Sky HighCasey La Scala
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
GrindAndrew Fleming
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
DickMitch Rouse
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Employee of the MonthLiz W. Garcia
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Space CadetSix 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
Toy Story 2
as Flik the Ant (voice) (uncredited)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Blast from the Past
as Troy
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Toy Story 2
as Flik the Ant (voice) (uncredited)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Toy Story 2
as Flik the Ant (voice) (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
A Bug's Life
as Flik (voice)
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. Dave Foley 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
27 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
15 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
Toy Story 2
as Flik the Ant (voice) (uncredited)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Toy Story 2
as Flik the Ant (voice) (uncredited)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Blast from the Past
as Troy
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Party Central
as Terry (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Toy Story 2
as Flik the Ant (voice) (uncredited)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Grind
as Tour Manager
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Blast from the Past
as Troy
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Cars
as Flik Car (voice)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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Bonnie Hunt
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Tom Wilkinson
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Elliot Page
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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