Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#16157
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Greg Proops represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 25 years in, and Greg is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Greg Proops appears in 5 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Greg. The Nightmare Before Christmas 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, emotional range. 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 Ross Shuman, Robert Walker, George Lucas and others, Greg Proops 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 Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) as Harlequin Demon / Devil / Sax Player (voice) · Brother Bear (2003) as Male Lover Bear (voice) · Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) as Fode (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #16157 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
5
1993–2018
Career length
25 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.0
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Average Nutevio score
6.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.8
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Most frequent director
Ross Shuman
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Ross Shuman
Most common genre
Adventure
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 35m
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
7.4 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, The Nightmare Before Christmas — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
7.4
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
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. Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Most productive era
1990s
2 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Action | 6.81 film | — | — |
| Comedy | — | — | 5.82 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
1993The Nightmare Before Christmas
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Harlequin Demon / Devil / Sax Player (voice). 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
2018Duck Duck Goose
The current state of the argument, as Banzou (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.
5 of 5 films
as Harlequin Demon / Devil / Sax Player (voice)
Directed by Henry Selick
as Male Lover Bear (voice)
Directed by Robert Walker
as Fode (voice)
Directed by George Lucas
as Banzou (voice)
Directed by Unknown
as Asmoday (voice)
Directed by Ross Shuman
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
Harlequin Demon / Devil / Sax Player (voice)
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Harlequin Demon / Devil / Sax Player (voice) gives Greg Proops a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Male Lover Bear (voice)
Brother Bear (2003)
Performance score7.2
Brother Bear asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Male Lover Bear (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Fode (voice)
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)
Performance score6.7
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Fode (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Banzou (voice)
Duck Duck Goose (2018)
Performance score6.5
Duck Duck Goose asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Banzou (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 Harlequin Demon / Devil / Sax Player (voice)
Start here. The Nightmare Before Christmas is the clearest statement of what Greg Proops does — accessible, 76 minutes, and rated 8.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Greg 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.
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)
A deliberate change of key after The Nightmare Before Christmas — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Brother Bear (2003)
Keeps the adventure register of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace but asks for a colder reading of it.
Hell and Back (2015)
Keeps the adventure register of Brother Bear but asks for a colder reading of it.
Duck Duck Goose (2018)
Keeps the comedy register of Hell and Back but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Henry Selick
Director
1 film together
Notably The Nightmare Before Christmas
George Lucas
Director
1 film together
Notably Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
Robert Walker
Director
1 film together
Notably Brother Bear
Ross Shuman
Director
1 film together
Notably Hell and Back
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Henry Selick
Director
1 film together · 8.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Nightmare Before ChristmasRobert Walker
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Brother BearGeorge Lucas
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom MenaceRoss Shuman
Director
1 film together · 5.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hell and BackSix 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 Nightmare Before Christmas
as Harlequin Demon / Devil / Sax Player (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
The Nightmare Before Christmas
as Harlequin Demon / Devil / Sax Player (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
The Nightmare Before Christmas
as Harlequin Demon / Devil / Sax Player (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
as Fode (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Nightmare Before Christmas
as Harlequin Demon / Devil / Sax Player (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. Greg Proops 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
25 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.
Adventure Legend
Awarded
4 catalogue titles in adventure, 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 Nightmare Before Christmas
as Harlequin Demon / Devil / Sax Player (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Nightmare Before Christmas
as Harlequin Demon / Devil / Sax Player (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Brother Bear
as Male Lover Bear (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Nightmare Before Christmas
as Harlequin Demon / Devil / Sax Player (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
as Fode (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
as Fode (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Hell and Back
as Asmoday (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
as Fode (voice)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Catherine Lagaʻaia
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and family
Dwayne Johnson
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and family
Rena Owen
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and family
John Tui
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and family
Have your say
Community
Which Greg Proops 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
