Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#6817
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Rick Zieff represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 38 years in, and Rick is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Rick Zieff appears in 11 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Rick. Hoppers is the clearest case: a film rated 8.1 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 science fiction, comedy, adventure. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Daniel Chong, Darrell Van Citters, Karey Kirkpatrick and others, Rick Zieff 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.
Hoppers (2026) as Additional Voices (voice) · We Bare Bears: The Movie (2020) as Additional Voices (voice) · Mississippi Burning (1988) as Passenger
Career snapshot
Ranked #6817 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
11
1988–2026
Career length
38 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.1
Hoppers
Average Nutevio score
6.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.2
Hoppers
Most frequent director
Daniel Chong
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Daniel Chong
Most common genre
Animation
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 32m
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
6.9
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
7.5 average MV
The 1980s are where the work and the material meet. Mississippi Burning — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1980s
7.5
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1980s
7.7
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. Mississippi Burning.
Most productive era
2020s
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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.51 film | 6.91 film | — | — | — |
| Action | — | 6.62 films | 6.21 film | 6.91 film | — |
| Thriller | 7.51 film | 6.62 films | 6.21 film | — | — |
| Comedy | — | — | — | 6.81 film | 7.14 films |
| Crime | 7.51 film | 6.62 films | — | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Passenger.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2026Hoppers
8.1 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. 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.
11 of 11 films
as Additional Voices (voice)
Directed by Daniel Chong
as Additional Voices (voice)
Directed by Daniel Chong
as Passenger
Directed by Alan Parker
as Desiccated Man (voice)
Directed by Michael Chang
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
Additional Voices (voice)
Hoppers (2026)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Additional Voices (voice) gives Rick Zieff a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Additional Voices (voice)
We Bare Bears: The Movie (2020)
Performance score7.3
We Bare Bears: The Movie 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#3
Passenger
Mississippi Burning (1988)
Performance score7.3
Mississippi Burning asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Passenger is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Crunch (voice)
Seal Team (2021)
Performance score6.8
Seal Team asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Crunch (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 Additional Voices (voice)
Start here. Hoppers is the clearest statement of what Rick Zieff does — accessible, 105 minutes, and rated 8.1 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.
Mississippi Burning (1988)
A deliberate change of key after Hoppers — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Superman vs. The Elite (2012)
A deliberate change of key after Mississippi Burning — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
We Bare Bears: The Movie (2020)
Keeps the animation register of Superman vs. The Elite but asks for a colder reading of it.
Seal Team (2021)
Keeps the family register of We Bare Bears: The Movie but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Jonathan Mostow
Director
2 films together
Notably Breakdown
Daniel Chong
Director
2 films together
Notably Hoppers
Alan Parker
Director
1 film together
Notably Mississippi Burning
John Badham
Director
1 film together
Notably Nick of Time
Michael Chang
Director
1 film together
Notably Superman vs. The Elite
Karey Kirkpatrick
Director
1 film together
Notably Smallfoot
Darrell Van Citters
Director
1 film together
Notably Tom and Jerry: Snowman's Land
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Daniel Chong
Director
2 films together · 7.8 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
HoppersJonathan Mostow
Director
2 films together · 6.6 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
BreakdownAlan Parker
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mississippi BurningMichael Chang
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Superman vs. The EliteDarrell Van Citters
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Tom and Jerry: Snowman's LandKarey Kirkpatrick
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SmallfootJohn Badham
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Nick of TimeSix 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
Hoppers
as Additional Voices (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
Smallfoot
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
Hoppers
as Additional Voices (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
VHYes
as Infomercial Announcer
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Hoppers
as Additional Voices (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. Rick Zieff 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
38 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.
Animation Legend
Awarded
6 catalogue titles in animation, 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
Mississippi Burning
as Passenger
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Mississippi Burning
as Passenger
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Smallfoot
as Additional Voices (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Mississippi Burning
as Passenger
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Hoppers
as Additional Voices (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Superman vs. The Elite
as Desiccated Man (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Smallfoot
as Additional Voices (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Tom and Jerry: Snowman's Land
as Meathead / Narrator (voice)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
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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
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Reference
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