Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#16630
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Dov Tiefenbach represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 27 years in, and Dov is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Dov Tiefenbach appears in 7 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Dov. The Mighty is the clearest case: a film rated 7.3 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, versatility, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for horror, crime, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Aaron Sorkin, Matthew Weiner, Danny Leiner and others, Dov Tiefenbach 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.
The Mighty (1998) as Doghouse Boy #1 · Molly's Game (2017) as Club Customer · It Feeds (2025) as Larry
Career snapshot
Ranked #16630 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
7
1998–2025
Career length
27 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.3
The Mighty
Average Nutevio score
6.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
The Mighty
Most frequent director
Aaron Sorkin
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Aaron Sorkin
Most common genre
Comedy
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 43m
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
6.5
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
7.3 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. The Mighty — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
7.3
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
7.3
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. The Mighty.
Most productive era
2000s
3 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 | 7.31 film | — | 7.21 film | — |
| Thriller | — | 6.11 film | — | — |
| Comedy | 7.31 film | 6.12 films | 5.11 film | — |
| Crime | — | 6.11 film | 7.21 film | — |
| Romance | — | 5.61 film | — | — |
| Horror | — | — | — | 6.71 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
1998The Mighty
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Doghouse Boy #1. 7.3 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
2025It Feeds
The current state of the argument, as Larry.
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.
7 of 7 films
as Doghouse Boy #1
Directed by Unknown
as Club Customer
Directed by Aaron Sorkin
as Hippie Student
Directed by Danny Leiner
as Zed Starkovitch
Directed by Matthew Weiner
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
Doghouse Boy #1
The Mighty (1998)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Doghouse Boy #1 gives Dov Tiefenbach a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Club Customer
Molly's Game (2017)
Performance score7.1
Molly's Game asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Club Customer is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Larry
It Feeds (2025)
Performance score6.6
It Feeds asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Larry is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Hippie Student
Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004)
Performance score6.6
Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Hippie Student 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 Doghouse Boy #1
Start here. The Mighty is the clearest statement of what Dov Tiefenbach does — accessible, 100 minutes, and rated 7.3 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Dov 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.
Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004)
Keeps the comedy register of The Mighty but asks for a colder reading of it.
Are You Here (2013)
Keeps the comedy register of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle but asks for a colder reading of it.
Molly's Game (2017)
A deliberate change of key after Are You Here — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
It Feeds (2025)
A deliberate change of key after Molly's Game — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Brian Koppelman
Director
1 film together
Notably Knockaround Guys
Tommy O'Haver
Director
1 film together
Notably Get Over It
Danny Leiner
Director
1 film together
Notably Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle
Matthew Weiner
Director
1 film together
Notably Are You Here
Aaron Sorkin
Director
1 film together
Notably Molly's Game
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Aaron Sorkin
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Molly's GameDanny Leiner
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Harold & Kumar Go to White CastleBrian Koppelman
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Knockaround GuysTommy O'Haver
Director
1 film together · 5.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Get Over ItMatthew Weiner
Director
1 film together · 5.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Are You HereSix 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
Molly's Game
as Club Customer
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Get Over It
as Little Steve
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
The Mighty
as Doghouse Boy #1
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Molly's Game
as Club Customer
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Mighty
as Doghouse Boy #1
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. Dov Tiefenbach 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
4 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
The Mighty
as Doghouse Boy #1
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Molly's Game
as Club Customer
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Get Over It
as Little Steve
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Knockaround Guys
as Teeze
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Mighty
as Doghouse Boy #1
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle
as Hippie Student
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Molly's Game
as Club Customer
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Mighty
as Doghouse Boy #1
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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