Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#13213
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Matt Levin 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.
Matt Levin appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Matt. Codename: Kids Next Door: Operation Z.E.R.O. 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 comedy, fantasy, adventure. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Ben Stiller, Josh Gordon, Tom Warburton and others, Matt Levin 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.
Codename: Kids Next Door: Operation Z.E.R.O. (2006) as Patton 'Numbuh 60' Drilovsky (voice) · Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002) as Joe (voice) · The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013) as Board Meeting Guy
Career snapshot
Ranked #13213 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
1990–2013
Career length
23 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.0
Codename: Kids Next Door: Operation Z.E.R.O.
Average Nutevio score
6.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.0
Codename: Kids Next Door: Operation Z.E.R.O.
Most frequent director
Ben Stiller
3 films together
Longest collaboration
3×
With Ben Stiller
Most common genre
Comedy
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 35m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.0
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
2010s
7.2 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.2
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
7.2
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1990s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Starship Troopers, Marked for Death.
Most productive era
2000s
7 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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.11 film | 7.32 films | 7.21 film |
| Action | 6.72 films | 7.32 films | — |
| Thriller | 6.72 films | — | — |
| Comedy | — | 6.75 films | 7.21 film |
| Crime | 6.11 film | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1990Marked for Death
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Boy #1.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2006Codename: Kids Next Door: Operation Z.E.R.O.
8.0 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.
Most recent film
2013The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
The current state of the argument, as Board Meeting Guy.
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.
10 of 10 films
as Patton 'Numbuh 60' Drilovsky (voice)
Directed by Tom Warburton
as Joe (voice)
Directed by Lorna Cook
as Board Meeting Guy
Directed by Ben Stiller
as Kitten Smith
Directed by Paul Verhoeven
as Benjamin (voice)
Directed by Robert C. Ramirez
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
Patton 'Numbuh 60' Drilovsky (voice)
Codename: Kids Next Door: Operation Z.E.R.O. (2006)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Patton 'Numbuh 60' Drilovsky (voice) gives Matt Levin a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Joe (voice)
Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002)
Performance score7.5
Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Joe (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Board Meeting Guy
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)
Performance score7.1
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Board Meeting Guy is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Kitten Smith
Starship Troopers (1997)
Performance score7.1
Starship Troopers asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Kitten Smith 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 Patton 'Numbuh 60' Drilovsky (voice)
Start here. Codename: Kids Next Door: Operation Z.E.R.O. is the clearest statement of what Matt Levin does — accessible, 73 minutes, and rated 8.0 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.
Starship Troopers (1997)
Keeps the action register of Codename: Kids Next Door: Operation Z.E.R.O. but asks for a colder reading of it.
Joseph: King of Dreams (2000)
A deliberate change of key after Starship Troopers — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002)
Keeps the family register of Joseph: King of Dreams but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)
Keeps the adventure register of Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Ben Stiller
Director
3 films together
Notably The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Dwight H. Little
Director
1 film together
Notably Marked for Death
Paul Verhoeven
Director
1 film together
Notably Starship Troopers
Robert C. Ramirez
Director
1 film together
Notably Joseph: King of Dreams
Lorna Cook
Director
1 film together
Notably Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron
Tom Warburton
Director
1 film together
Notably Codename: Kids Next Door: Operation Z.E.R.O.
Josh Gordon
Director
1 film together
Notably Blades of Glory
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Ben Stiller
Director
3 films together · 6.7 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The Secret Life of Walter MittyTom Warburton
Director
1 film together · 8.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Codename: Kids Next Door: Operation Z.E.R.O.Lorna Cook
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Spirit: Stallion of the CimarronPaul Verhoeven
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Starship TroopersRobert C. Ramirez
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Joseph: King of DreamsJosh Gordon
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Blades of GloryDwight H. Little
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Marked for DeathSix 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
Starship Troopers
as Kitten Smith
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron
as Joe (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
Codename: Kids Next Door: Operation Z.E.R.O.
as Patton 'Numbuh 60' Drilovsky (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
as Board Meeting Guy
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Codename: Kids Next Door: Operation Z.E.R.O.
as Patton 'Numbuh 60' Drilovsky (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. Matt Levin 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
23 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
6 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
Codename: Kids Next Door: Operation Z.E.R.O.
as Patton 'Numbuh 60' Drilovsky (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Codename: Kids Next Door: Operation Z.E.R.O.
as Patton 'Numbuh 60' Drilovsky (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Joseph: King of Dreams
as Benjamin (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Codename: Kids Next Door: Operation Z.E.R.O.
as Patton 'Numbuh 60' Drilovsky (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Codename: Kids Next Door: Operation Z.E.R.O.
as Patton 'Numbuh 60' Drilovsky (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Codename: Kids Next Door: Operation Z.E.R.O.
as Patton 'Numbuh 60' Drilovsky (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
as Board Meeting Guy
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Starship Troopers
as Kitten Smith
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
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
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Jamie Harris
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Have your say
Community
Which Matt Levin 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
