Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#800
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Denis Leary represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 34 years in, and Denis is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Denis Leary appears in 18 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Denis. Ice Age is the clearest case: a film rated 7.6 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 comedy, adventure, family. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with John Donkin, Michael Showalter, Michael Bonfiglio and others, Denis Leary 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.
Ice Age (2002) as Diego (voice) · Patrice O'Neal: Killing Is Easy (2021) as Self · A Bug's Life (1998) as Francis (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #800 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
18
1993–2027
Career length
34 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.6
Ice Age
Average Nutevio score
6.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.4
Ice Age
Most frequent director
Marc Webb
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Marc Webb
Most common genre
Comedy
12 titles
Average runtime
1h 40m
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
2000s
7.1 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Ice Age: The Meltdown, Ice Age — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
7.1
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
7.0
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. True Crime, The Thomas Crown Affair, A Bug's Life.
Most productive era
1990s
7 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 | 6.74 films | — | 6.71 film | — |
| Action | 6.73 films | — | 6.92 films | — |
| Thriller | 6.52 films | — | — | — |
| Comedy | 6.84 films | 7.13 films | 6.32 films | 4.23 films |
| Crime | 6.74 films | — | — | — |
| Romance | 6.81 film | — | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1993Demolition Man
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Edgar Friendly.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2002Ice Age
7.6 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 Diego (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.
18 of 18 films
as Diego (voice)
Directed by Chris Wedge
as Diego (voice)
Directed by Carlos Saldanha
as Diego (voice)
Directed by Carlos Saldanha
as Det. Michael McCann
Directed by John McTiernan
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
Diego (voice)
Ice Age (2002)
Performance score7.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Diego (voice) gives Denis Leary a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Diego (voice)
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009)
Performance score7.3
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Diego (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Diego (voice)
Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006)
Performance score7.3
Ice Age: The Meltdown asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Diego (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Det. Michael McCann
The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)
Performance score7.2
The Thomas Crown Affair asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Det. Michael McCann 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 Diego (voice)
Start here. Ice Age is the clearest statement of what Denis Leary does — accessible, 81 minutes, and rated 7.6 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Denis 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.
The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)
A deliberate change of key after Ice Age — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006)
A deliberate change of key after The Thomas Crown Affair — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009)
Same director as Ice Age: The Meltdown, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Draft Day (2014)
A deliberate change of key after Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Carlos Saldanha
Director
2 films together
Notably Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
Marc Webb
Director
2 films together
Notably The Amazing Spider-Man
Marco Brambilla
Director
1 film together
Notably Demolition Man
Barry Levinson
Director
1 film together
Notably Wag the Dog
Peter O'Fallon
Director
1 film together
Notably Suicide Kings
Joe Dante
Director
1 film together
Notably Small Soldiers
John Lasseter
Director
1 film together
Notably A Bug's Life
John McTiernan
Director
1 film together
Notably The Thomas Crown Affair
Clint Eastwood
Director
1 film together
Notably True Crime
Chris Wedge
Director
1 film together
Notably Ice Age
Ivan Reitman
Director
1 film together
Notably Draft Day
Michael Bonfiglio
Director
1 film together
Notably Patrice O'Neal: Killing Is Easy
Michael Showalter
Director
1 film together
Notably Oh. What. Fun.
John Donkin
Director
1 film together
Notably Ice Age: Boiling Point
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Marc Webb
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
The Amazing Spider-ManCarlos Saldanha
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
Ice Age: Dawn of the DinosaursChris Wedge
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Ice AgeMichael Bonfiglio
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Patrice O'Neal: Killing Is EasyJohn Lasseter
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Bug's LifeBarry Levinson
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Wag the DogJohn McTiernan
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 Thomas Crown AffairMarco Brambilla
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Demolition ManIvan Reitman
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Draft DayJoe Dante
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Small SoldiersPeter O'Fallon
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Suicide KingsClint Eastwood
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
True CrimeMichael Showalter
Director
1 film together · 5.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Oh. What. Fun.John Donkin
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Ice Age: Boiling PointSix 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 Amazing Spider-Man
as Captain Stacy
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
The Thomas Crown Affair
as Det. Michael McCann
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Ice Age
as Diego (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Amazing Spider-Man 2
as Captain Stacy (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Ice Age
as Diego (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. Denis Leary 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
34 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
12 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
Ice Age
as Diego (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Suicide Kings
as Lono Veccio
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Thomas Crown Affair
as Det. Michael McCann
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
True Crime
as Bob Findley
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Amazing Spider-Man
as Captain Stacy
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Amazing Spider-Man 2
as Captain Stacy (uncredited)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Suicide Kings
as Lono Veccio
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Amazing Spider-Man
as Captain Stacy
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Jamie Harris
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Have your say
Community
Which Denis Leary performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
Join the conversation
Reference
Continue exploring
Trending performers
Directors they work with
Collections to read next
