Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#7753
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Jesse Heiman works on versatility rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Jesse Heiman appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Jesse. Spider-Man is the clearest case: a film rated 7.7 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 comedy, tv movie, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Kelly Oxford, Nicholas Stoller, Joseph Kahn and others, Jesse Heiman 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.
Spider-Man (2002) as Spectator at School Fight (uncredited) · Old School (2003) as Budnick · Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) as Theater Audience Member (uncredited)
Career snapshot
Ranked #7753 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
2001–2020
Career length
19 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.7
Spider-Man
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
Spider-Man
Most frequent director
Nicholas Stoller
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Nicholas Stoller
Most common genre
Comedy
8 titles
Average runtime
1h 42m
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
6.3
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
2000s
6.4 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. 17 Again, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Shaggy Dog — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.4
Across 6 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.3
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2000s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. 17 Again, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Shaggy Dog.
Most productive era
2000s
6 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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.51 film | — | 5.71 film |
| Action | 7.71 film | — | — |
| Comedy | 6.15 films | 5.92 films | 5.71 film |
| Romance | 6.42 films | — | — |
| Horror | — | 5.61 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2001American Pie 2
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Petey.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2002Spider-Man
7.7 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
2020Pink Skies Ahead
The current state of the argument, as Kevin.
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 Spectator at School Fight (uncredited)
Directed by Sam Raimi
as Kevin
Directed by Kelly Oxford
as The Babysitter
Directed by Nicholas Stoller
as Nerd
Directed by Joseph Kahn
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
Spectator at School Fight (uncredited)
Spider-Man (2002)
Performance score7.5
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Spectator at School Fight (uncredited) gives Jesse Heiman a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Budnick
Old School (2003)
Performance score6.6
Old School asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Budnick is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Kevin
Pink Skies Ahead (2020)
Performance score6.5
Pink Skies Ahead asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Kevin is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
The Babysitter
Neighbors (2014)
Performance score6.5
Neighbors asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. The Babysitter 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 Spectator at School Fight (uncredited)
Start here. Spider-Man is the clearest statement of what Jesse Heiman does — accessible, 121 minutes, and rated 7.7 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Jesse 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.
Old School (2003)
A deliberate change of key after Spider-Man — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Detention (2012)
Keeps the comedy register of Old School but asks for a colder reading of it.
Neighbors (2014)
Keeps the comedy register of Detention but asks for a colder reading of it.
Pink Skies Ahead (2020)
Keeps the comedy register of Neighbors but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Nicholas Stoller
Director
2 films together
Notably Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Sam Raimi
Director
1 film together
Notably Spider-Man
Todd Phillips
Director
1 film together
Notably Old School
Brian Robbins
Director
1 film together
Notably The Shaggy Dog
Burr Steers
Director
1 film together
Notably 17 Again
Joseph Kahn
Director
1 film together
Notably Detention
Kelly Oxford
Director
1 film together
Notably Pink Skies Ahead
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Nicholas Stoller
Director
2 films together · 6.3 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Forgetting Sarah MarshallSam Raimi
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Spider-ManTodd Phillips
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Old SchoolBurr Steers
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
17 AgainKelly Oxford
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Pink Skies AheadJoseph Kahn
Director
1 film together · 5.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
DetentionBrian Robbins
Director
1 film together · 4.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Shaggy DogSix 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
Spider-Man
as Spectator at School Fight (uncredited)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
as Theater Audience Member (uncredited)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Spider-Man
as Spectator at School Fight (uncredited)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Spider-Man
as Spectator at School Fight (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Spider-Man
as Spectator at School Fight (uncredited)
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. Jesse Heiman 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.
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
Spider-Man
as Spectator at School Fight (uncredited)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Spider-Man
as Spectator at School Fight (uncredited)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
as Theater Audience Member (uncredited)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
17 Again
as Mascot
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Spider-Man
as Spectator at School Fight (uncredited)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Spider-Man
as Spectator at School Fight (uncredited)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
as Theater Audience Member (uncredited)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Spider-Man
as Spectator at School Fight (uncredited)
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
Tom Wilkinson
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and drama
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: drama and fantasy
Harry Dean Stanton
Built a career in the same territory: drama and fantasy
Elliot Page
Built a career in the same territory: drama and fantasy
Have your say
Community
Which Jesse Heiman 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
