Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#30692
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Jan Hoag represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 26 years in, and Jan is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Jan Hoag appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Jan. The Fabelmans 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 drama, action, western. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Steven Spielberg, Rob Zombie, Karyn Kusama and others, Jan Hoag 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 Fabelmans (2022) as Nona · Wild (2014) as Annette · The Kid (2000) as Newsstand Tourist
Career snapshot
Ranked #30692 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
1996–2022
Career length
26 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.6
The Fabelmans
Average Nutevio score
6.3
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.6
The Fabelmans
Most frequent director
Steven Spielberg
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Steven Spielberg
Most common genre
Drama
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 50m
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
2020s
7.6 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. The Fabelmans — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
7.6
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
7.6
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 Dentist.
Most productive era
2010s
4 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 | — | — | 6.43 films | 7.61 film |
| Action | — | — | 6.03 films | — |
| Thriller | 5.51 film | — | 6.03 films | — |
| Comedy | — | 6.23 films | — | — |
| Crime | — | — | 6.22 films | — |
| Horror | 5.51 film | — | 5.81 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1996The Dentist
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Candy.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2022The Fabelmans
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. The current state of the argument, as Nona.
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.
9 of 9 films
as Nona
Directed by Steven Spielberg
as Newsstand Tourist
Directed by Jon Turteltaub
as Guard Betty Lou
Directed by Rob Zombie
as Toby's Mother
Directed by Karyn Kusama
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
Nona
The Fabelmans (2022)
Performance score7.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Nona gives Jan Hoag a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Annette
Wild (2014)
Performance score6.9
Wild asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Annette is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Newsstand Tourist
The Kid (2000)
Performance score6.7
The Kid asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Newsstand Tourist is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Guard Betty Lou
3 from Hell (2019)
Performance score6.5
3 from Hell asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Guard Betty Lou 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 Nona
Start here. The Fabelmans is the clearest statement of what Jan Hoag does — accessible, 151 minutes, and rated 7.6 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Jan 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 Kid (2000)
A deliberate change of key after The Fabelmans — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Wild (2014)
A deliberate change of key after The Kid — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Destroyer (2018)
Keeps the drama register of Wild but asks for a colder reading of it.
3 from Hell (2019)
Keeps the action register of Destroyer but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Brian Yuzna
Director
1 film together
Notably The Dentist
Jon Turteltaub
Director
1 film together
Notably The Kid
Joe Roth
Director
1 film together
Notably Christmas with the Kranks
Tom Shadyac
Director
1 film together
Notably Evan Almighty
George Tillman Jr.
Director
1 film together
Notably Faster
Jean-Marc Vallée
Director
1 film together
Notably Wild
Karyn Kusama
Director
1 film together
Notably Destroyer
Rob Zombie
Director
1 film together
Notably 3 from Hell
Steven Spielberg
Director
1 film together
Notably The Fabelmans
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Steven Spielberg
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The FabelmansJean-Marc Vallée
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
WildJon Turteltaub
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 KidGeorge Tillman Jr.
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
FasterJoe Roth
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Christmas with the KranksKaryn Kusama
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
DestroyerRob Zombie
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
3 from HellTom Shadyac
Director
1 film together · 5.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Evan AlmightyBrian Yuzna
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The DentistSix 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 Fabelmans
as Nona
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Wild
as Annette
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 Fabelmans
as Nona
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Evan Almighty
as Neighbor
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Fabelmans
as Nona
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. Jan Hoag 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
26 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
4 catalogue titles in drama, 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 Fabelmans
as Nona
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Faster
as Receptionist
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Wild
as Annette
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Kid
as Newsstand Tourist
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Fabelmans
as Nona
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
3 from Hell
as Guard Betty Lou
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Faster
as Receptionist
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Faster
as Receptionist
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: family and comedy
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: family and comedy
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: drama and fantasy
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Have your say
Community
Which Jan Hoag 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
