Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#43888
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Rick Tae works on transformation 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.
Rick Tae appears in 4 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Rick. 2012 is the clearest case: a film rated 6.1 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are transformation, versatility, 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, adventure. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Roland Emmerich, Les Mayfield, Stephen Herek and others, Rick Tae 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.
2012 (2009) as Megaphone Officer · Life or Something Like It (2002) as Fan · Code Name: The Cleaner (2007) as Mini Bar Attendant
Career snapshot
Ranked #43888 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
4
2001–2009
Career length
8 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.1
2012
Average Nutevio score
5.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
5.9
2012
Most frequent director
Roland Emmerich
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Roland Emmerich
Most common genre
Comedy
3 titles
Average runtime
1h 48m
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
6.1
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
5.4 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. 2012, Code Name: The Cleaner, Life or Something Like It — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
5.4
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
5.4
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. 2012, Code Name: The Cleaner, Life or Something Like It.
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 | 2000s |
|---|---|
| Drama | 5.71 film |
| Action | 5.72 films |
| Comedy | 5.23 films |
| Crime | 5.21 film |
| Romance | 5.71 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Career peak
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Security Guard. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance · Most recent film
20092012
6.1 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. The current state of the argument, as Megaphone Officer.
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.
4 of 4 films
as Megaphone Officer
Directed by Roland Emmerich
as Mini Bar Attendant
Directed by Les Mayfield
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
Megaphone Officer
2012 (2009)
Performance score6.5
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Megaphone Officer gives Rick Tae a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Mini Bar Attendant
Code Name: The Cleaner (2007)
Performance score6.5
Code Name: The Cleaner asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mini Bar Attendant is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Fan
Life or Something Like It (2002)
Performance score6.5
Life or Something Like It asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Fan is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Security Guard
Freddy Got Fingered (2001)
Performance score6.5
Freddy Got Fingered asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Security Guard 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 Megaphone Officer
Start here. 2012 is the clearest statement of what Rick Tae does — accessible, 158 minutes, and rated 6.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Rick 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.
Freddy Got Fingered (2001)
A deliberate change of key after 2012 — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Life or Something Like It (2002)
Keeps the comedy register of Freddy Got Fingered but asks for a colder reading of it.
Code Name: The Cleaner (2007)
Keeps the comedy register of Life or Something Like It but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Tom Green
Director
1 film together
Notably Freddy Got Fingered
Stephen Herek
Director
1 film together
Notably Life or Something Like It
Les Mayfield
Director
1 film together
Notably Code Name: The Cleaner
Roland Emmerich
Director
1 film together
Notably 2012
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Roland Emmerich
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
2012Stephen Herek
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Life or Something Like ItLes Mayfield
Director
1 film together · 5.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Code Name: The CleanerTom Green
Director
1 film together · 4.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Freddy Got FingeredSix 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
2012
as Megaphone Officer
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Life or Something Like It
as Fan
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
2012
as Megaphone Officer
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Life or Something Like It
as Fan
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
2012
as Megaphone Officer
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. Rick Tae 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
3 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
2012
as Megaphone Officer
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
2012
as Megaphone Officer
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Life or Something Like It
as Fan
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Code Name: The Cleaner
as Mini Bar Attendant
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
2012
as Megaphone Officer
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
2012
as Megaphone Officer
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Life or Something Like It
as Fan
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
2012
as Megaphone Officer
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
Community
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Reference
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