Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#6576
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Zachary Gordon 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.
Zachary Gordon appears in 17 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Zachary. Afro Samurai: Resurrection 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 history, documentary, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Justine Bateman, Mike Elliott, Don Scardino and others, Zachary Gordon 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.
Afro Samurai: Resurrection (2009) as Kotaro (voice) · That's What I Am (2011) as Additional Voices (voice) · Violet (2021) as Bradley
Career snapshot
Ranked #6576 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
17
2007–2025
Career length
18 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.9
Afro Samurai: Resurrection
Average Nutevio score
5.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
6.9
Afro Samurai: Resurrection
Most frequent director
Justine Bateman
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Justine Bateman
Most common genre
Comedy
12 titles
Average runtime
1h 44m
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
6.2
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
6.4 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Afro Samurai: Resurrection, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, The Brothers Bloom — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.4
Across 7 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.3
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. Afro Samurai: Resurrection, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, The Brothers Bloom.
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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.35 films | 6.81 film | 6.71 film |
| Action | 6.72 films | — | — |
| Thriller | — | — | 5.71 film |
| Comedy | 6.25 films | 6.16 films | 6.11 film |
| Romance | 6.14 films | 6.81 film | — |
| Horror | — | — | 5.71 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2007National Treasure: Book of Secrets
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Lincoln Conspiracy Kid.
Highest rated performance
2009Afro Samurai: Resurrection
6.9 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
2011Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
The current state of the argument, as Daniel Skelly (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.
17 of 17 films
as Greg Heffley
Directed by Thor Freudenthal
as Kotaro (voice)
Directed by Fuminori Kizaki
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
Greg Heffley
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules (2011)
Performance score7.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Greg Heffley gives Zachary Gordon a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Greg Heffley
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days (2012)
Performance score7.1
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Greg Heffley is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Greg Heffley
Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2010)
Performance score7.0
Diary of a Wimpy Kid asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Greg Heffley is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Bradley
Violet (2021)
Performance score6.9
Violet asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Bradley 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 Greg Heffley
Start here. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules is the clearest statement of what Zachary Gordon does — accessible, 99 minutes, and rated 6.7 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Zachary 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.
Afro Samurai: Resurrection (2009)
A deliberate change of key after Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2010)
A deliberate change of key after Afro Samurai: Resurrection — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days (2012)
Keeps the comedy register of Diary of a Wimpy Kid but asks for a colder reading of it.
Violet (2021)
A deliberate change of key after Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Daniel Waters
Director
1 film together
Notably Sex and Death 101
Garry Marshall
Director
1 film together
Notably Georgia Rule
Jon Turteltaub
Director
1 film together
Notably National Treasure: Book of Secrets
Seth Gordon
Director
1 film together
Notably Four Christmases
Rian Johnson
Director
1 film together
Notably The Brothers Bloom
Eric Darnell
Director
1 film together
Notably Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
Fuminori Kizaki
Director
1 film together
Notably Afro Samurai: Resurrection
Thor Freudenthal
Director
1 film together
Notably Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Michael Pavone
Director
1 film together
Notably That's What I Am
Don Scardino
Director
1 film together
Notably The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
Mike Elliott
Director
1 film together
Notably American Pie Presents: Girls' Rules
Justine Bateman
Director
1 film together
Notably Violet
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Fuminori Kizaki
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Afro Samurai: ResurrectionMichael Pavone
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
That's What I AmJustine Bateman
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
VioletEric Darnell
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Madagascar: Escape 2 AfricaRian Johnson
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Brothers BloomJon Turteltaub
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
National Treasure: Book of SecretsThor Freudenthal
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Diary of a Wimpy KidMike Elliott
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
American Pie Presents: Girls' RulesDaniel Waters
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Sex and Death 101Garry Marshall
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Georgia RuleDon Scardino
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Incredible Burt WonderstoneSeth Gordon
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Four ChristmasesSix 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
Afro Samurai: Resurrection
as Kotaro (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
That's What I Am
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
Afro Samurai: Resurrection
as Kotaro (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Four Christmases
as Kid in Jump-Jump
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules
as Greg Heffley
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. Zachary Gordon 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
12 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
Afro Samurai: Resurrection
as Kotaro (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
as Lincoln Conspiracy Kid
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
That's What I Am
as Additional Voices (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Dreamcatcher
as Jake
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Afro Samurai: Resurrection
as Kotaro (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Afro Samurai: Resurrection
as Kotaro (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
That's What I Am
as Additional Voices (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
as Baby Melman (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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David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Jamie Harris
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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