Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#2097
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Alain Chabat represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 25 years in, and Alain is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Alain Chabat appears in 15 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Alain. Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra is the clearest case: a film rated 7.4 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 comedy, music, adventure. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Sébastien Vaniček, Alexandre Astier, Gilles Lellouche and others, Alain Chabat 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.
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra (2002) as Jules César · Play (2019) as Le père de Max · Beating Hearts (2024) as Le père de Jackie
Career snapshot
Ranked #2097 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
15
2002–2027
Career length
25 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.4
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
Average Nutevio score
6.1
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.9
Evil Dead Burn
Most frequent director
Alexandre Astier
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Alexandre Astier
Most common genre
Comedy
11 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
6.3
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
2000s
6.8 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.8
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.8
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. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra.
Most productive era
2020s
9 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 | — | 6.11 film | 7.21 film |
| Action | 6.31 film | 6.71 film | — |
| Comedy | 6.82 films | 6.63 films | 5.16 films |
| Crime | — | — | 7.21 film |
| Romance | — | — | 7.21 film |
| Horror | — | — | 6.81 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
2002Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Jules César. 7.4 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
The current state of the argument, as Bigsby (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.
15 of 15 films
as Goscinny (voice)
Directed by Benjamin Massoubre
as Jules César
Directed by Alain Chabat
as Le père de Jackie
Directed by Gilles Lellouche
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
Goscinny (voice)
Little Nicholas: Happy as Can Be (2022)
Performance score7.5
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Goscinny (voice) gives Alain Chabat a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Jules César
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra (2002)
Performance score7.5
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Jules César is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Le père de Max
Play (2019)
Performance score7.4
Play asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Le père de Max is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Le père de Jackie
Beating Hearts (2024)
Performance score7.3
Beating Hearts asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Le père de Jackie 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 Goscinny (voice)
Start here. Little Nicholas: Happy as Can Be is the clearest statement of what Alain Chabat does — accessible, 86 minutes, and rated 6.9 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Alain 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.
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra (2002)
Keeps the family register of Little Nicholas: Happy as Can Be but asks for a colder reading of it.
Play (2019)
Keeps the comedy register of Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra but asks for a colder reading of it.
Incredible But True (2022)
Same director as Play, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Beating Hearts (2024)
A deliberate change of key after Incredible But True — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Alexandre Astier
Director
2 films together
Notably Kaamelott: The First Chapter
Alain Chabat
Director
1 film together
Notably Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
Shawn Levy
Director
1 film together
Notably Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
Brian Robbins
Director
1 film together
Notably A Thousand Words
Luc Besson
Director
1 film together
Notably Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
Benjamin Massoubre
Director
1 film together
Notably Little Nicholas: Happy as Can Be
Gilles Lellouche
Director
1 film together
Notably Beating Hearts
Sébastien Vaniček
Director
1 film together
Notably Evil Dead Burn
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Alexandre Astier
Director
2 films together · 6.3 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Kaamelott: The First ChapterAlain Chabat
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Asterix & Obelix: Mission CleopatraGilles Lellouche
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Beating HeartsBenjamin Massoubre
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Little Nicholas: Happy as Can BeSébastien Vaniček
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Evil Dead BurnLuc Besson
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Valerian and the City of a Thousand PlanetsShawn Levy
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Night at the Museum: Battle of the SmithsonianBrian Robbins
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Thousand WordsSix 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
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
as Jules César
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Beating Hearts
as Le père de Jackie
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
as Jules César
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Kaamelott: The Second Chapter (Part I)
as Le Duc d'Aquitaine
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Little Nicholas: Happy as Can Be
as Goscinny (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. Alain Chabat 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
25 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.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
11 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
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
as Jules César
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Evil Dead Burn
as Alice's Father (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Beating Hearts
as Le père de Jackie
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Incredible But True
as Alain
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
as Bob the Pirate
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
as Bob the Pirate
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Kaamelott: The Second Chapter (Part I)
as Le Duc d'Aquitaine
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
as Napoleon Bonaparte
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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