Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#9698
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Liz Cackowski 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.
Liz Cackowski appears in 11 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Liz. Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers is the clearest case: a film rated 7.0 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 mystery, comedy, adventure. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Akiva Schaffer, Brandon Trost, Nicholas Stoller and others, Liz Cackowski 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.
Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022) as Cow Teacher / Tigra / Officer O'Hara / Bird Wife (voice) · Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) as Flint's Teacher (voice) · Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016) as Poppies Producer
Career snapshot
Ranked #9698 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
11
2008–2022
Career length
14 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.0
Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.0
Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers
Most frequent director
Nicholas Stoller
3 films together
Longest collaboration
3×
With Nicholas Stoller
Most common genre
Comedy
11 titles
Average runtime
1h 37m
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
6.2
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
6.6 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, I Love You, Man, Forgetting Sarah Marshall — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.6
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.6
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. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, I Love You, Man, Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
Most productive era
2010s
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 | — | 5.81 film |
| Action | — | 5.61 film | — |
| Comedy | 6.63 films | 5.96 films | 6.42 films |
| Romance | 6.52 films | 5.81 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Liz Bretter.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2022Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers
7.0 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 Cow Teacher / Tigra / Officer O'Hara / Bird Wife (voice).
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.
11 of 11 films
as Cow Teacher / Tigra / Officer O'Hara / Bird Wife (voice)
Directed by Akiva Schaffer
as Flint's Teacher (voice)
Directed by Phil Lord
as Poppies Producer
Directed by Jorma Taccone
as Zooey's Friend
Directed by John Hamburg
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
Cow Teacher / Tigra / Officer O'Hara / Bird Wife (voice)
Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022)
Performance score6.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Cow Teacher / Tigra / Officer O'Hara / Bird Wife (voice) gives Liz Cackowski a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Flint's Teacher (voice)
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009)
Performance score6.7
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Flint's Teacher (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Poppies Producer
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016)
Performance score6.6
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Poppies Producer is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Zooey's Friend
I Love You, Man (2009)
Performance score6.6
I Love You, Man asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Zooey's Friend 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 Cow Teacher / Tigra / Officer O'Hara / Bird Wife (voice)
Start here. Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers is the clearest statement of what Liz Cackowski does — accessible, 99 minutes, and rated 7.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Liz 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.
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009)
Keeps the comedy register of Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers but asks for a colder reading of it.
I Love You, Man (2009)
Keeps the comedy register of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs but asks for a colder reading of it.
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016)
Keeps the comedy register of I Love You, Man but asks for a colder reading of it.
An American Pickle (2020)
Keeps the comedy register of Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Nicholas Stoller
Director
3 films together
Notably Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Akiva Schaffer
Director
2 films together
Notably Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers
John Hamburg
Director
1 film together
Notably I Love You, Man
Phil Lord
Director
1 film together
Notably Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Maggie Carey
Director
1 film together
Notably The To Do List
Jorma Taccone
Director
1 film together
Notably Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
Brandon Trost
Director
1 film together
Notably An American Pickle
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Nicholas Stoller
Director
3 films together · 6.2 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Forgetting Sarah MarshallAkiva Schaffer
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
Chip 'n Dale: Rescue RangersPhil Lord
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Cloudy with a Chance of MeatballsJorma Taccone
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Popstar: Never Stop Never StoppingJohn Hamburg
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
I Love You, ManBrandon Trost
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
An American PickleMaggie Carey
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 To Do ListSix 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
Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers
as Cow Teacher / Tigra / Officer O'Hara / Bird Wife (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
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
as Liz Bretter
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers
as Cow Teacher / Tigra / Officer O'Hara / Bird Wife (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
as Poppies Producer
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers
as Cow Teacher / Tigra / Officer O'Hara / Bird Wife (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. Liz Cackowski 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
11 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
Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers
as Cow Teacher / Tigra / Officer O'Hara / Bird Wife (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers
as Cow Teacher / Tigra / Officer O'Hara / Bird Wife (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
as Liz Bretter
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers
as Cow Teacher / Tigra / Officer O'Hara / Bird Wife (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers
as Cow Teacher / Tigra / Officer O'Hara / Bird Wife (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Watch
as Carla
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
as Liz Bretter
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
as Flint's Teacher (voice)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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Bonnie Hunt
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Tom Wilkinson
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and drama
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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