Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#57404
of 909177 performers
Top 10%
Mak Wilson represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 29 years in, and Mak is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Mak Wilson appears in 6 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Mak. Little Shop of Horrors is the clearest case: a film rated 6.9 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, adventure, family. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with James Bobin, Garth Jennings, Michael Pressman and others, Mak Wilson 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.
Little Shop of Horrors (1986) as Doo-Wop Street Singer · The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005) as Vogon Interpreter (voice) · Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) as Michelangelo
Career snapshot
Ranked #57404 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
6
1985–2014
Career length
29 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.9
Little Shop of Horrors
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.0
Little Shop of Horrors
Most frequent director
James Bobin
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With James Bobin
Most common genre
Comedy
5 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
6.6
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
1980s
6.8 average MV
The 1980s are where the work and the material meet. Little Shop of Horrors, Return to Oz — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1980s
6.8
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1980s
6.8
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1980s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Little Shop of Horrors, Return to Oz.
Most productive era
1980s
2 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 | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Action | — | 6.52 films | — | — |
| Comedy | 6.91 film | 6.52 films | 6.71 film | 6.31 film |
| Crime | — | — | — | 6.31 film |
| Horror | 6.91 film | — | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1985Return to Oz
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Billina.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
6.9 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
The current state of the argument, as UK Muppet Performer (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.
6 of 6 films
as Doo-Wop Street Singer
Directed by Frank Oz
as Vogon Interpreter (voice)
Directed by Garth Jennings
as Michelangelo
Directed by Steve Barron
as Billina
Directed by Walter Murch
as UK Muppet Performer (voice)
Directed by James Bobin
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
Doo-Wop Street Singer
Little Shop of Horrors (1986)
Performance score6.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Doo-Wop Street Singer gives Mak Wilson a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Vogon Interpreter (voice)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
Performance score6.6
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Vogon Interpreter (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Michelangelo
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)
Performance score6.6
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Michelangelo is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Billina
Return to Oz (1985)
Performance score6.6
Return to Oz asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Billina 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 Doo-Wop Street Singer
Start here. Little Shop of Horrors is the clearest statement of what Mak Wilson does — accessible, 94 minutes, and rated 6.9 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Mak 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.
Return to Oz (1985)
A deliberate change of key after Little Shop of Horrors — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)
Keeps the adventure register of Return to Oz but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
Keeps the science fiction register of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles but asks for a colder reading of it.
Muppets Most Wanted (2014)
Keeps the comedy register of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Walter Murch
Director
1 film together
Notably Return to Oz
Frank Oz
Director
1 film together
Notably Little Shop of Horrors
Steve Barron
Director
1 film together
Notably Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Michael Pressman
Director
1 film together
Notably Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze
Garth Jennings
Director
1 film together
Notably The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
James Bobin
Director
1 film together
Notably Muppets Most Wanted
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Frank Oz
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Little Shop of HorrorsGarth Jennings
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the GalaxySteve Barron
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Teenage Mutant Ninja TurtlesWalter Murch
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Return to OzJames Bobin
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Muppets Most WantedMichael Pressman
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the OozeSix 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 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
as Vogon Interpreter (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
Return to Oz
as Billina
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Little Shop of Horrors
as Doo-Wop Street Singer
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Muppets Most Wanted
as UK Muppet Performer (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Little Shop of Horrors
as Doo-Wop Street Singer
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. Mak Wilson 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
29 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
5 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
Return to Oz
as Billina
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Little Shop of Horrors
as Doo-Wop Street Singer
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Return to Oz
as Billina
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Return to Oz
as Billina
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
as Michelangelo
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze
as Promoter's Aide
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Muppets Most Wanted
as UK Muppet Performer (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
as Vogon Interpreter (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
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Reference
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