Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#2537
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
David Ogden Stiers represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 35 years in, and David is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
David Ogden Stiers appears in 16 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without David. Beauty and the Beast 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, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for mystery, fantasy, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with M. Night Shyamalan, Bobs Gannaway, Dean DeBlois and others, David Ogden Stiers 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.
Beauty and the Beast (1991) as Cogsworth (voice) · Lilo & Stitch (2002) as Jumba (voice) · The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) as Archdeacon (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #2537 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
16
1971–2006
Career length
35 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.8
Beauty and the Beast
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.7
Beauty and the Beast
Most frequent director
Kirk Wise
3 films together
Longest collaboration
3×
With Kirk Wise
Most common genre
Family
9 titles
Average runtime
1h 32m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.0
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
1990s
6.8 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Everyone Says I Love You — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
6.8
Across 6 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
6.7
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1970s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Magic, THX 1138.
Most productive era
2000s
8 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 | 1970s | 1990s | 2000s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.72 films | 7.21 film | 6.22 films |
| Comedy | — | 6.52 films | 6.45 films |
| Crime | — | — | 6.31 film |
| Romance | — | 6.75 films | 5.92 films |
| Horror | 6.81 film | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1971THX 1138
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Announcer (voice).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
7.8 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 Narrator (uncredited).
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 Cogsworth (voice)
Directed by Kirk Wise
as Jumba (voice)
Directed by Dean DeBlois
as Governor Ratcliffe (voice)
Directed by Mike Gabriel
as Archdeacon (voice)
Directed by Kirk Wise
as Mr. Harcourt (voice)
Directed by Kirk Wise
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
Cogsworth (voice)
Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Cogsworth (voice) gives David Ogden Stiers a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Jumba (voice)
Lilo & Stitch (2002)
Performance score7.7
Lilo & Stitch asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Jumba (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Governor Ratcliffe (voice)
Pocahontas (1995)
Performance score7.4
Pocahontas asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Governor Ratcliffe (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Archdeacon (voice)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
Performance score7.1
The Hunchback of Notre Dame asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Archdeacon (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 Cogsworth (voice)
Start here. Beauty and the Beast is the clearest statement of what David Ogden Stiers does — accessible, 84 minutes, and rated 7.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet David 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.
Pocahontas (1995)
Keeps the romance register of Beauty and the Beast but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
Keeps the family register of Pocahontas but asks for a colder reading of it.
Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)
Same director as The Hunchback of Notre Dame, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Lilo & Stitch (2002)
Keeps the science fiction register of Atlantis: The Lost Empire but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Kirk Wise
Director
3 films together
Notably Beauty and the Beast
George Lucas
Director
1 film together
Notably THX 1138
Richard Attenborough
Director
1 film together
Notably Magic
Michael Caton-Jones
Director
1 film together
Notably Doc Hollywood
Mike Gabriel
Director
1 film together
Notably Pocahontas
Woody Allen
Director
1 film together
Notably Everyone Says I Love You
Bradley Raymond
Director
1 film together
Notably Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World
Frank Darabont
Director
1 film together
Notably The Majestic
Dean DeBlois
Director
1 film together
Notably Lilo & Stitch
Bobs Gannaway
Director
1 film together
Notably Stitch! The Movie
M. Night Shyamalan
Director
1 film together
Notably Lady in the Water
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Kirk Wise
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
Beauty and the BeastDean DeBlois
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Lilo & StitchMike Gabriel
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
PocahontasFrank Darabont
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The MajesticRichard Attenborough
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
MagicWoody Allen
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Everyone Says I Love YouGeorge Lucas
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
THX 1138Bobs Gannaway
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Stitch! The MovieMichael Caton-Jones
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Doc HollywoodBradley Raymond
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Pocahontas II: Journey to a New WorldM. Night Shyamalan
Director
1 film together · 5.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Lady in the WaterSix 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
Beauty and the Beast
as Cogsworth (voice)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Beauty and the Beast
as Cogsworth (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
Beauty and the Beast
as Cogsworth (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
THX 1138
as Announcer (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Beauty and the Beast
as Cogsworth (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. David Ogden Stiers 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
35 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.
Family Legend
Awarded
9 catalogue titles in family, 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
Beauty and the Beast
as Cogsworth (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Magic
as George Todson
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Majestic
as Doc Stanton
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Lady in the Water
as Narrator (uncredited)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Beauty and the Beast
as Cogsworth (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Pocahontas
as Governor Ratcliffe (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Pocahontas
as Governor Ratcliffe (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World
as Ratcliffe (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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