Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#10268
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
David P. Smith 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.
David P. Smith appears in 12 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without David. Bilby 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, comedy. 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 Pierre Perifel, Tom McGrath, Walt Dohrn and others, David P. Smith 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.
Bilby (2018) as Bilby (voice) · The Bad Guys (2022) as Prison Guard 2 / Gala Guest 2 / Protestor (voice) · Abominable (2019) as Goon (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #10268 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
12
2004–2026
Career length
22 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.0
Bilby
Average Nutevio score
6.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.0
Bilby
Most frequent director
Pierre Perifel
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Pierre Perifel
Most common genre
Family
12 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
6.9
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
2010s
7.8 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Abominable, Bilby — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.8
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
7.7
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. Monsters vs Aliens, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, Shrek the Third.
Most productive era
2000s
6 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 | 6.21 film | — | 7.51 film |
| Comedy | 6.85 films | 7.82 films | 6.84 films |
| Crime | — | — | 7.51 film |
| Romance | 7.51 film | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2004Shark Tale
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Crazy Joe (voice).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2018Bilby
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 Pufferfish (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.
12 of 12 films
as Bilby (voice)
Directed by Pierre Perifel
as Prison Guard 2 / Gala Guest 2 / Protestor (voice)
Directed by Pierre Perifel
as Goon (voice)
Directed by Unknown
as Herald / Man with Box (voice)
Directed by Andrew Adamson
as Movie Patron (voice)
Directed by Tom McGrath
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
Bilby (voice)
Bilby (2018)
Performance score8.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Bilby (voice) gives David P. Smith a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Prison Guard 2 / Gala Guest 2 / Protestor (voice)
The Bad Guys (2022)
Performance score7.3
The Bad Guys asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Prison Guard 2 / Gala Guest 2 / Protestor (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Goon (voice)
Abominable (2019)
Performance score7.3
Abominable asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Goon (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Herald / Man with Box (voice)
Shrek 2 (2004)
Performance score7.3
Shrek 2 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Herald / Man with Box (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 Bilby (voice)
Start here. Bilby is the clearest statement of what David P. Smith does — accessible, 8 minutes, and rated 8.0 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.
Shrek 2 (2004)
Keeps the comedy register of Bilby but asks for a colder reading of it.
Abominable (2019)
Keeps the comedy register of Shrek 2 but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Boss Baby: Family Business (2021)
Keeps the comedy register of Abominable but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Bad Guys (2022)
Keeps the comedy register of The Boss Baby: Family Business but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Eric Darnell
Director
2 films together
Notably Madagascar
Pierre Perifel
Director
2 films together
Notably Bilby
Andrew Adamson
Director
1 film together
Notably Shrek 2
Bibo Bergeron
Director
1 film together
Notably Shark Tale
Chris Miller
Director
1 film together
Notably Shrek the Third
Rob Letterman
Director
1 film together
Notably Monsters vs Aliens
Walt Dohrn
Director
1 film together
Notably Trolls World Tour
Tom McGrath
Director
1 film together
Notably The Boss Baby: Family Business
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Pierre Perifel
Director
2 films together · 7.8 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
BilbyEric Darnell
Director
2 films together · 6.9 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
MadagascarAndrew Adamson
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Shrek 2Tom McGrath
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Boss Baby: Family BusinessWalt Dohrn
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Trolls World TourRob Letterman
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Monsters vs AliensChris Miller
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Shrek the ThirdBibo Bergeron
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Shark TaleSix 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 Bad Guys
as Prison Guard 2 / Gala Guest 2 / Protestor (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
Shrek 2
as Herald / Man with Box (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
Bilby
as Bilby (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Shrek the Third
as Waiter / Evil Dwarf (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Bilby
as Bilby (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 P. Smith 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.
Family Legend
Awarded
12 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
Bilby
as Bilby (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Bad Guys
as Prison Guard 2 / Gala Guest 2 / Protestor (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Trolls World Tour
as Country Music Rooster (voice) / Desert Sun (voice) / Eighth Goats (voice) / Licky Bug (voice) / Scrapbook Troll (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Abominable
as Goon (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Bad Guys
as Prison Guard 2 / Gala Guest 2 / Protestor (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Bad Guys
as Prison Guard 2 / Gala Guest 2 / Protestor (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Shrek 2
as Herald / Man with Box (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Monsters vs Aliens
as Soldier #1 / Advisor Jackson (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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