Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#13169
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
John Hans Tester 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.
John Hans Tester appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without John. Despicable Me is the clearest case: a film rated 7.5 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, thriller, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Jake Johnson, Ava DuVernay, Roland Emmerich and others, John Hans Tester 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.
Despicable Me (2010) as Additional Voices (voice) · Hotel Transylvania (2012) as Additional Voices (voice) · Monster House (2006) as Background Voices
Career snapshot
Ranked #13169 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
2006–2024
Career length
18 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.5
Despicable Me
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
Despicable Me
Most frequent director
Jake Johnson
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Jake Johnson
Most common genre
Comedy
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 41m
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
6.4
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
2010s
7.0 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. White House Down, Hotel Transylvania, Despicable Me — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.0
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.9
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. The Informant!, Open Season 2, Monster House.
Most productive era
2000s
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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.21 film | 6.51 film | 6.21 film |
| Action | — | 6.51 film | — |
| Thriller | — | 6.51 film | 5.91 film |
| Comedy | 6.34 films | 7.32 films | 5.91 film |
| Crime | 6.21 film | 7.51 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2006Monster House
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Background Voices.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2010Despicable Me
7.5 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
2024Self Reliance
The current state of the argument, as Anders.
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 Additional Voices (voice)
Directed by Chris Renaud
as Additional Voices (voice)
Directed by Genndy Tartakovsky
as Background Voices
Directed by Unknown
as Anders
Directed by Jake Johnson
as Ulrich Kostlin
Directed by Ava DuVernay
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
Additional Voices (voice)
Despicable Me (2010)
Performance score7.3
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Additional Voices (voice) gives John Hans Tester a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Additional Voices (voice)
Hotel Transylvania (2012)
Performance score6.9
Hotel Transylvania asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Additional Voices (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Background Voices
Monster House (2006)
Performance score6.6
Monster House asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Background Voices is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Anders
Self Reliance (2024)
Performance score6.5
Self Reliance asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Anders 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 Additional Voices (voice)
Start here. Despicable Me is the clearest statement of what John Hans Tester does — accessible, 95 minutes, and rated 7.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet John 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.
Monster House (2006)
Keeps the comedy register of Despicable Me but asks for a colder reading of it.
Hotel Transylvania (2012)
Keeps the comedy register of Monster House but asks for a colder reading of it.
Origin (2023)
A deliberate change of key after Hotel Transylvania — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Self Reliance (2024)
A deliberate change of key after Origin — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Roger Allers
Director
1 film together
Notably Open Season
Matthew O'Callaghan
Director
1 film together
Notably Open Season 2
Chris Renaud
Director
1 film together
Notably Despicable Me
Genndy Tartakovsky
Director
1 film together
Notably Hotel Transylvania
Roland Emmerich
Director
1 film together
Notably White House Down
Ava DuVernay
Director
1 film together
Notably Origin
Jake Johnson
Director
1 film together
Notably Self Reliance
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Chris Renaud
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Despicable MeGenndy Tartakovsky
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hotel TransylvaniaRoland Emmerich
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
White House DownAva DuVernay
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
OriginRoger Allers
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Open SeasonJake Johnson
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Self RelianceMatthew O'Callaghan
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Open Season 2Six 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
Despicable Me
as Additional Voices (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
Origin
as Ulrich Kostlin
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Despicable Me
as Additional Voices (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
White House Down
as Reporter
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Despicable Me
as Additional Voices (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. John Hans Tester 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
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
Despicable Me
as Additional Voices (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
White House Down
as Reporter
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Origin
as Ulrich Kostlin
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Monster House
as Background Voices
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Despicable Me
as Additional Voices (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
White House Down
as Reporter
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Informant!
as Peter Dreyer
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Despicable Me
as Additional Voices (voice)
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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