Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#15866
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Ted Knight represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 50 years in, and Ted is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Ted Knight appears in 3 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Ted. Psycho is the clearest case: a film rated 8.5 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, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Peter Shin, Robert Altman, Alfred Hitchcock, Ted Knight 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.
Psycho (1960) as Policeman in Hallway Opening Door (uncredited) · M*A*S*H (1970) as Offstage Dialog (voice) (uncredited) · Family Guy Presents: It's a Trap! (2010) as Judge Elihu Smails (archive footage) (uncredited)
Career snapshot
Ranked #15866 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
3
1960–2010
Career length
50 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.5
Psycho
Average Nutevio score
7.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.4
Psycho
Most frequent director
Peter Shin
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Peter Shin
Most common genre
Comedy
2 titles
Average runtime
1h 29m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.4
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
7.4
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
1960s
8.5 average MV
The 1960s are where the work and the material meet. Psycho — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1960s
8.5
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1960s
8.4
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1960s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Psycho.
Most productive era
1960s
1 film
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 | 1960s | 1970s | 2010s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.91 film | — |
| Action | — | — | 6.81 film |
| Thriller | 8.51 film | — | — |
| Comedy | — | 6.91 film | 6.81 film |
| Horror | 8.51 film | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
1960Psycho
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Policeman in Hallway Opening Door (uncredited). 8.5 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
2010Family Guy Presents: It's a Trap!
The current state of the argument, as Judge Elihu Smails (archive footage) (uncredited).
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.
3 of 3 films
as Policeman in Hallway Opening Door (uncredited)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
as Offstage Dialog (voice) (uncredited)
Directed by Robert Altman
as Judge Elihu Smails (archive footage) (uncredited)
Directed by Peter Shin
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
Policeman in Hallway Opening Door (uncredited)
Psycho (1960)
Performance score8.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Policeman in Hallway Opening Door (uncredited) gives Ted Knight a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Offstage Dialog (voice) (uncredited)
M*A*S*H (1970)
Performance score6.8
M*A*S*H asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Offstage Dialog (voice) (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Judge Elihu Smails (archive footage) (uncredited)
Family Guy Presents: It's a Trap! (2010)
Performance score6.7
Family Guy Presents: It's a Trap! asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Judge Elihu Smails (archive footage) (uncredited) 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 Policeman in Hallway Opening Door (uncredited)
Start here. Psycho is the clearest statement of what Ted Knight does — accessible, 109 minutes, and rated 8.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Ted 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.
M*A*S*H (1970)
A deliberate change of key after Psycho — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Family Guy Presents: It's a Trap! (2010)
Keeps the comedy register of M*A*S*H but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Alfred Hitchcock
Director
1 film together · 8.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
PsychoRobert Altman
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
M*A*S*HPeter Shin
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Family Guy Presents: It's a Trap!Six 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
Psycho
as Policeman in Hallway Opening Door (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
M*A*S*H
as Offstage Dialog (voice) (uncredited)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Psycho
as Policeman in Hallway Opening Door (uncredited)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
M*A*S*H
as Offstage Dialog (voice) (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Psycho
as Policeman in Hallway Opening Door (uncredited)
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. Ted Knight 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
50 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
2 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
Psycho
as Policeman in Hallway Opening Door (uncredited)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Psycho
as Policeman in Hallway Opening Door (uncredited)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
M*A*S*H
as Offstage Dialog (voice) (uncredited)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Psycho
as Policeman in Hallway Opening Door (uncredited)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Psycho
as Policeman in Hallway Opening Door (uncredited)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Family Guy Presents: It's a Trap!
as Judge Elihu Smails (archive footage) (uncredited)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
M*A*S*H
as Offstage Dialog (voice) (uncredited)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Psycho
as Policeman in Hallway Opening Door (uncredited)
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: drama and thriller
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and drama
Christian Bale
Built a career in the same territory: action and drama
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and drama
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: animation and comedy
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and comedy
Have your say
Community
Which Ted Knight 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
