Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3850
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Jimmy Kimmel 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.
Jimmy Kimmel appears in 26 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Jimmy. Norman Lear: 100 Years of Music and Laughter 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, fantasy, family. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Sam Levinson, Chris Miller, Tony Goldwyn and others, Jimmy Kimmel 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.
Norman Lear: 100 Years of Music and Laughter (2022) as Self · The Happy Days of Garry Marshall (2020) as Self · Live in Front of a Studio Audience: The Facts of Life and Diff'rent Strokes (2021) as Self - Host
Career snapshot
Ranked #3850 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
26
2008–2026
Career length
18 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.0
Norman Lear: 100 Years of Music and Laughter
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.0
Norman Lear: 100 Years of Music and Laughter
Most frequent director
Tom McGrath
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Tom McGrath
Most common genre
Documentary
12 titles
Average runtime
1h 40m
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
2000s
6.8 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Hellboy II: The Golden Army — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.8
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.8
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. Hellboy II: The Golden Army.
Most productive era
2020s
17 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 | — | 6.31 film | 6.91 film |
| Action | 6.81 film | 7.21 film | 7.31 film |
| Comedy | — | 6.56 films | 6.26 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2008Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Jimmy Kimmel.
Highest rated performance
2020The Happy Days of Garry Marshall
8.0 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
2022Norman Lear: 100 Years of Music and Laughter
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)(uncredited).
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.
26 of 26 films
as Self
Directed by Unknown
as Grandpa (Ted Sr.) (voice)
Directed by Tom McGrath
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
Self
Norman Lear: 100 Years of Music and Laughter (2022)
Performance score8.0
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Self gives Jimmy Kimmel a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Self
The Happy Days of Garry Marshall (2020)
Performance score7.8
The Happy Days of Garry Marshall asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Self - Host
One World: Together at Home (2020)
Performance score7.5
One World: Together at Home asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self - Host is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Self - Host
Live in Front of a Studio Audience: The Facts of Life and Diff'rent Strokes (2021)
Performance score7.3
Live in Front of a Studio Audience: The Facts of Life and Diff'rent Strokes asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self - Host 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
Start here. Norman Lear: 100 Years of Music and Laughter is the clearest statement of what Jimmy Kimmel does — accessible, 85 minutes, and rated 8.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Jimmy 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 Happy Days of Garry Marshall (2020)
Same director as Norman Lear: 100 Years of Music and Laughter, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
One World: Together at Home (2020)
Same director as The Happy Days of Garry Marshall, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Live in Front of a Studio Audience: The Facts of Life and Diff'rent Strokes (2021)
A deliberate change of key after One World: Together at Home — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Boss Baby: Family Business (2021)
Keeps the comedy register of Live in Front of a Studio Audience: The Facts of Life and Diff'rent Strokes but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Andy Fisher
Director
2 films together
Notably Live in Front of a Studio Audience: The Facts of Life and Diff'rent Strokes
Tom McGrath
Director
2 films together
Notably The Boss Baby: Family Business
Guillermo del Toro
Director
1 film together
Notably Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Elizabeth Banks
Director
1 film together
Notably Pitch Perfect 2
Seth MacFarlane
Director
1 film together
Notably Ted 2
Mike White
Director
1 film together
Notably Brad's Status
Aaron Horvath
Director
1 film together
Notably Teen Titans Go! To the Movies
Bryce Dallas Howard
Director
1 film together
Notably Dads
Tony Goldwyn
Director
1 film together
Notably Ezra
Chris Miller
Director
1 film together
Notably Smurfs
Sam Levinson
Director
1 film together
Notably Euphoria: A Look Back
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Tom McGrath
Director
2 films together · 6.9 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The Boss Baby: Family BusinessAndy Fisher
Director
2 films together · 6.8 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Aaron Horvath
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Teen Titans Go! To the MoviesTony Goldwyn
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
EzraBryce Dallas Howard
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
DadsElizabeth Banks
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Pitch Perfect 2Guillermo del Toro
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hellboy II: The Golden ArmyMike White
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Brad's StatusSeth MacFarlane
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Ted 2Chris Miller
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SmurfsSam Levinson
Director
1 film together · 3.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Euphoria: A Look 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
Norman Lear: 100 Years of Music and Laughter
as Self
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Smurfs
as Tardigrade (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 Happy Days of Garry Marshall
as Self
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Brad's Status
as Self
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Norman Lear: 100 Years of Music and Laughter
as Self
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. Jimmy Kimmel 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.
Documentary Legend
Awarded
12 catalogue titles in documentary, 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
Norman Lear: 100 Years of Music and Laughter
as Self
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
PAW Patrol: The Movie
as Marty Muckracker (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Smurfs
as Tardigrade (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Smurfs
as Tardigrade (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
PAW Patrol: The Movie
as Marty Muckracker (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
PAW Patrol: The Movie
as Marty Muckracker (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
PAW Patrol: The Movie
as Marty Muckracker (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Smurfs
as Tardigrade (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
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Elliot Page
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Catherine Lagaʻaia
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and family
Have your say
Community
Which Jimmy Kimmel 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
