Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#6543
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Jerry Stiller represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 51 years in, and Jerry is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Jerry Stiller appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Jerry. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is the clearest case: a film rated 7.1 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, action, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Ben Stiller, Bobs Gannaway, Bobby Farrelly and others, Jerry Stiller 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 Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) as Rico Patrone · Hairspray (2007) as Mr. Pinky · Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) as Man in Bar (uncredited)
Career snapshot
Ranked #6543 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
1974–2025
Career length
51 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.1
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.5
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
Most frequent director
Ben Stiller
3 films together
Longest collaboration
3×
With Ben Stiller
Most common genre
Comedy
8 titles
Average runtime
1h 39m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.9
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
6.8
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
1970s
7.1 average MV
The 1970s are where the work and the material meet. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1970s
7.1
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1970s
7.5
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1970s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.
Most productive era
2000s
5 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 | 1970s | 1980s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | — | 6.71 film | — | — |
| Action | 7.11 film | — | — | 4.91 film | — |
| Thriller | 7.11 film | — | — | — | — |
| Comedy | — | 6.71 film | 6.25 films | 5.62 films | — |
| Crime | 7.11 film | — | — | — | — |
| Romance | — | 6.71 film | 6.32 films | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance
1974The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Rico Patrone. 7.1 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak · Most recent film
2025Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once. 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.
10 of 10 films
as Self (archive footage)
Directed by Ben Stiller
as Rico Patrone
Directed by Joseph Sargent
as Mr. Pinky
Directed by Adam Shankman
as Wilbur Turnblad
Directed by John Waters
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
Self (archive footage)
Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost (2025)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Self (archive footage) gives Jerry Stiller a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Rico Patrone
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)
Performance score7.0
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Rico Patrone is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Mr. Pinky
Hairspray (2007)
Performance score6.6
Hairspray asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mr. Pinky is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Man in Bar (uncredited)
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)
Performance score6.6
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Man in Bar (uncredited) 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 Self (archive footage)
Start here. Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost is the clearest statement of what Jerry Stiller does — accessible, 98 minutes, and rated 6.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Jerry 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 Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)
A deliberate change of key after Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Hairspray (1988)
A deliberate change of key after The Taking of Pelham One Two Three — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)
Keeps the comedy register of Hairspray but asks for a colder reading of it.
Hairspray (2007)
Keeps the comedy register of Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Ben Stiller
Director
3 films together
Notably Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost
Joseph Sargent
Director
1 film together
Notably The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
John Waters
Director
1 film together
Notably Hairspray
Reginald Hudlin
Director
1 film together
Notably Serving Sara
Adam McKay
Director
1 film together
Notably Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
Adam Shankman
Director
1 film together
Notably Hairspray
Bobby Farrelly
Director
1 film together
Notably The Heartbreak Kid
Bobs Gannaway
Director
1 film together
Notably Planes: Fire & Rescue
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Ben Stiller
Director
3 films together · 5.9 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is LostJoseph Sargent
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Taking of Pelham One Two ThreeAdam Shankman
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
HairsprayAdam McKay
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron BurgundyJohn Waters
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
HairsprayBobs Gannaway
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Planes: Fire & RescueBobby Farrelly
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Heartbreak KidReginald Hudlin
Director
1 film together · 5.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Serving SaraSix 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 Taking of Pelham One Two Three
as Rico Patrone
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Hairspray
as Wilbur Turnblad
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 Taking of Pelham One Two Three
as Rico Patrone
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
as Man in Bar (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost
as Self (archive footage)
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. Jerry Stiller 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
51 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
8 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 Taking of Pelham One Two Three
as Rico Patrone
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
as Rico Patrone
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Hairspray
as Wilbur Turnblad
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
as Rico Patrone
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
as Rico Patrone
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Zoolander 2
as Maury Ballstein
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Hairspray
as Mr. Pinky
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Heartbreak Kid
as Doc
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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