Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#16125
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Harvey Fierstein represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 30 years in, and Harvey is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Harvey Fierstein appears in 11 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Harvey. Mulan 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, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for documentary, romance, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Jeffrey Schwarz, Nicholas Stoller, Tony Bancroft and others, Harvey Fierstein 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.
Mulan (1998) as Yao (voice) · Hairspray Live! (2016) as Edna Turnblad · Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) as Frank
Career snapshot
Ranked #16125 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
11
1993–2023
Career length
30 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.0
Mulan
Average Nutevio score
5.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.9
Mulan
Most frequent director
Tony Bancroft
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Tony Bancroft
Most common genre
Comedy
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 44m
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
6.4
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
7.5 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Mulan, Independence Day, Mrs. Doubtfire — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
7.5
Across 3 catalogue films 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. Mulan, Independence Day, Mrs. Doubtfire.
Most productive era
1990s
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 | 5.91 film | 7.31 film | — |
| Action | 7.11 film | 6.51 film | — | — |
| Thriller | — | 5.91 film | — | — |
| Comedy | 7.31 film | 6.23 films | 6.82 films | 6.61 film |
| Crime | — | 5.91 film | — | — |
| Romance | — | — | 7.31 film | 6.61 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1993Mrs. Doubtfire
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Frank.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1998Mulan
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 Self (archive footage).
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.
11 of 11 films
as Yao (voice)
Directed by Tony Bancroft
as Edna Turnblad
Directed by Kenny Leon
as Frank
Directed by Chris Columbus
as Marty Gilbert
Directed by Roland Emmerich
as Yao (voice)
Directed by Lynne Southerland
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
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The defining work
#1
Yao (voice)
Mulan (1998)
Performance score8.0
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Yao (voice) gives Harvey Fierstein a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Edna Turnblad
Hairspray Live! (2016)
Performance score7.4
Hairspray Live! asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Edna Turnblad is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Frank
Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)
Performance score7.2
Mrs. Doubtfire asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Frank is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Marty Gilbert
Independence Day (1996)
Performance score7.0
Independence Day asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Marty Gilbert 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 Yao (voice)
Start here. Mulan is the clearest statement of what Harvey Fierstein does — accessible, 88 minutes, and rated 8.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Harvey 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.
Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)
Keeps the family register of Mulan but asks for a colder reading of it.
Independence Day (1996)
A deliberate change of key after Mrs. Doubtfire — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Mulan II (2004)
Keeps the action register of Independence Day but asks for a colder reading of it.
Hairspray Live! (2016)
Keeps the comedy register of Mulan II but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Danny DeVito
Director
2 films together
Notably Duplex
Tony Bancroft
Director
2 films together
Notably Mulan
Chris Columbus
Director
1 film together
Notably Mrs. Doubtfire
Roland Emmerich
Director
1 film together
Notably Independence Day
Lynne Southerland
Director
1 film together
Notably Mulan II
Kenny Leon
Director
1 film together
Notably Hairspray Live!
Nicholas Stoller
Director
1 film together
Notably Bros
Jeffrey Schwarz
Director
1 film together
Notably Commitment to Life
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Tony Bancroft
Director
2 films together · 7.2 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
MulanDanny DeVito
Director
2 films together · 6.0 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
DuplexKenny Leon
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hairspray Live!Chris Columbus
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mrs. DoubtfireRoland Emmerich
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Independence DayNicholas Stoller
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BrosLynne Southerland
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mulan IIJeffrey Schwarz
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Commitment to LifeSix 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
Mulan
as Yao (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
Mulan
as Yao (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
Mulan
as Yao (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Bros
as Louis
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Mulan
as Yao (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. Harvey Fierstein 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
30 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
7 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
Mulan
as Yao (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Mulan
as Yao (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Hairspray Live!
as Edna Turnblad
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Animal Crackers
as Esmerelda (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Mulan
as Yao (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Independence Day
as Marty Gilbert
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Hairspray Live!
as Edna Turnblad
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Independence Day
as Marty Gilbert
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Reference
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