Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#30038
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Matt Adler represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 28 years in, and Matt is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Matt Adler appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Matt. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs 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 fantasy, adventure, family. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Chris Wedge, Carlos Saldanha, Scott Derrickson and others, Matt Adler 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.
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009) as Additional Voice (voice) · Flight of the Navigator (1986) as Jeff (16 years) · Epic (2013) as Additional Voices (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #30038 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
1985–2013
Career length
28 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.9
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
Average Nutevio score
6.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.0
Flight of the Navigator
Most frequent director
Chris Wedge
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Chris Wedge
Most common genre
Adventure
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 38m
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
6.5
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
6.7 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Epic — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.7
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.6
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. Amazon Women on the Moon, Flight of the Navigator, Teen Wolf.
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 | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | — | 6.32 films | — |
| Action | — | 6.21 film | 6.41 film | — |
| Thriller | — | 6.21 film | 5.91 film | — |
| Comedy | 6.22 films | — | 6.91 film | — |
| Romance | 6.31 film | — | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1985Teen Wolf
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Lewis.
Career peak
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
2009Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
6.9 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
2013Epic
The current state of the argument, as Additional Voices (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.
9 of 9 films
as Jeff (16 years)
Directed by Randal Kleiser
as Additional Voice (voice)
Directed by Carlos Saldanha
as Additional Voices (voice)
Directed by Chris Wedge
as (voice)
Directed by Scott Derrickson
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
Jeff (16 years)
Flight of the Navigator (1986)
Performance score7.0
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Jeff (16 years) gives Matt Adler a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Additional Voice (voice)
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009)
Performance score6.8
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Additional Voice (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Additional Voices (voice)
Epic (2013)
Performance score6.6
Epic 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#4
Additional Voices (voice)
Dinosaur (2000)
Performance score6.6
Dinosaur 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 movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Jeff (16 years)
Start here. Flight of the Navigator is the clearest statement of what Matt Adler does — accessible, 90 minutes, and rated 6.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Matt 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.
Dinosaur (2000)
Keeps the adventure register of Flight of the Navigator but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)
Keeps the drama register of Dinosaur but asks for a colder reading of it.
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009)
A deliberate change of key after The Day the Earth Stood Still — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Epic (2013)
Keeps the adventure register of Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Rod Daniel
Director
1 film together
Notably Teen Wolf
Randal Kleiser
Director
1 film together
Notably Flight of the Navigator
Robert K. Weiss
Director
1 film together
Notably Amazon Women on the Moon
Mimi Leder
Director
1 film together
Notably The Peacemaker
Scott Derrickson
Director
1 film together
Notably The Day the Earth Stood Still
Carlos Saldanha
Director
1 film together
Notably Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
Chris Wedge
Director
1 film together
Notably Epic
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Carlos Saldanha
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Ice Age: Dawn of the DinosaursRandal Kleiser
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Flight of the NavigatorChris Wedge
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
EpicRod Daniel
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Teen WolfMimi Leder
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The PeacemakerRobert K. Weiss
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Amazon Women on the MoonScott Derrickson
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Day the Earth Stood StillSix 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
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
as Additional Voice (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
Epic
as Additional Voices (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
Flight of the Navigator
as Jeff (16 years)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Day the Earth Stood Still
as (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Flight of the Navigator
as Jeff (16 years)
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. Matt Adler 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
28 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.
Adventure Legend
Awarded
5 catalogue titles in adventure, 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
Epic
as Additional Voices (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Peacemaker
as Alan
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Epic
as Additional Voices (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Epic
as Additional Voices (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
as Additional Voices (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
as Additional Voices (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Dinosaur
as Additional Voices (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Day the Earth Stood Still
as (voice)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Reference
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