Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#2457
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Phil Hartman 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.
Phil Hartman appears in 8 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Phil. Spaceballs 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 action, science fiction, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Joe Dante, Brian Levant, Jonathan Lynn and others, Phil Hartman 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.
Spaceballs (1987) as Dink (voice) (uncredited) · The Brave Little Toaster (1987) as Air Conditioner / Hanging Lamp (voice) · Small Soldiers (1998) as Phil Fimple
Career snapshot
Ranked #2457 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
8
1985–1998
Career length
13 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.9
Spaceballs
Average Nutevio score
6.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
6.9
The Brave Little Toaster
Most frequent director
Joe Dante
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Joe Dante
Most common genre
Comedy
7 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
6.3
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
6.5 average MV
The 1980s are where the work and the material meet. Spaceballs, The Brave Little Toaster, Amazon Women on the Moon — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1980s
6.5
Across 5 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1980s
6.5
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. Spaceballs, The Brave Little Toaster, Amazon Women on the Moon.
Most productive era
1980s
5 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Action | 6.41 film | 6.61 film |
| Comedy | 6.44 films | 6.33 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Reporter.
Highest rated performance
1987Spaceballs
6.9 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
1998Small Soldiers
The current state of the argument, as Phil Fimple.
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.
8 of 8 films
as Air Conditioner / Hanging Lamp (voice)
Directed by Jerry Rees
as Phil Fimple
Directed by Joe Dante
as Dink (voice) (uncredited)
Directed by Mel Brooks
as Ted Maltin
Directed by Brian Levant
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
Air Conditioner / Hanging Lamp (voice)
The Brave Little Toaster (1987)
Performance score7.0
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Air Conditioner / Hanging Lamp (voice) gives Phil Hartman a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Phil Fimple
Small Soldiers (1998)
Performance score6.8
Small Soldiers asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Phil Fimple is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Dink (voice) (uncredited)
Spaceballs (1987)
Performance score6.8
Spaceballs asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Dink (voice) (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Ted Maltin
Jingle All the Way (1996)
Performance score6.7
Jingle All the Way asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Ted Maltin 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 Air Conditioner / Hanging Lamp (voice)
Start here. The Brave Little Toaster is the clearest statement of what Phil Hartman 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 Phil 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.
Spaceballs (1987)
A deliberate change of key after The Brave Little Toaster — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Greedy (1994)
Keeps the comedy register of Spaceballs but asks for a colder reading of it.
Jingle All the Way (1996)
Keeps the comedy register of Greedy but asks for a colder reading of it.
Small Soldiers (1998)
Keeps the comedy register of Jingle All the Way but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Tim Burton
Director
1 film together
Notably Pee-wee's Big Adventure
John Landis
Director
1 film together
Notably ¡Three Amigos!
Robert K. Weiss
Director
1 film together
Notably Amazon Women on the Moon
Jerry Rees
Director
1 film together
Notably The Brave Little Toaster
Mel Brooks
Director
1 film together
Notably Spaceballs
Jonathan Lynn
Director
1 film together
Notably Greedy
Brian Levant
Director
1 film together
Notably Jingle All the Way
Joe Dante
Director
1 film together
Notably Small Soldiers
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Mel Brooks
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SpaceballsJerry Rees
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Brave Little ToasterJoe Dante
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Small SoldiersTim Burton
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Pee-wee's Big AdventureJohn Landis
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
¡Three Amigos!Brian Levant
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Jingle All the WayJonathan Lynn
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
GreedyRobert K. Weiss
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Amazon Women on the MoonSix 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
Spaceballs
as Dink (voice) (uncredited)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
The Brave Little Toaster
as Air Conditioner / Hanging Lamp (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
Spaceballs
as Dink (voice) (uncredited)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Spaceballs
as Dink (voice) (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Brave Little Toaster
as Air Conditioner / Hanging Lamp (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. Phil Hartman 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.
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
The Brave Little Toaster
as Air Conditioner / Hanging Lamp (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Small Soldiers
as Phil Fimple
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Brave Little Toaster
as Air Conditioner / Hanging Lamp (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Brave Little Toaster
as Air Conditioner / Hanging Lamp (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Small Soldiers
as Phil Fimple
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Small Soldiers
as Phil Fimple
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Brave Little Toaster
as Air Conditioner / Hanging Lamp (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Jingle All the Way
as Ted Maltin
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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