Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#1549
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Jason Segel represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 28 years in, and Jason is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Jason Segel appears in 19 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Jason. Despicable Me is the clearest case: a film rated 7.5 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 action, comedy, thriller. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Jorma Taccone, Charlie McDowell, Jake Kasdan and others, Jason Segel 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.
Despicable Me (2010) as Vector (voice) · Our Friend (2019) as Dane Faucheux · SLC Punk (1998) as Mike
Career snapshot
Ranked #1549 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
19
1998–2026
Career length
28 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.5
Despicable Me
Average Nutevio score
6.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
Despicable Me
Most frequent director
Charlie McDowell
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Charlie McDowell
Most common genre
Comedy
16 titles
Average runtime
1h 41m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.9
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
6.5
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
1990s
6.9 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. SLC Punk — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
6.9
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
7.1
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1990s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. SLC Punk.
Most productive era
2010s
11 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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.91 film | 6.52 films | 6.53 films | 5.81 film |
| Action | — | — | 6.41 film | 6.61 film |
| Thriller | — | — | 6.41 film | 6.22 films |
| Comedy | 6.91 film | 6.64 films | 6.39 films | 6.52 films |
| Crime | — | — | 7.51 film | 5.81 film |
| Romance | — | 6.63 films | 6.54 films | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1998SLC Punk
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Mike.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2010Despicable Me
7.5 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
The current state of the argument, as Dan.
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.
19 of 19 films
as Vector (voice)
Directed by Chris Renaud
as Gary
Directed by James Bobin
as Dane Faucheux
Directed by Unknown
as Peter Bretter
Directed by Nicholas Stoller
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
Vector (voice)
Despicable Me (2010)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Vector (voice) gives Jason Segel a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Gary
The Muppets (2011)
Performance score7.4
The Muppets asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Gary is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Dane Faucheux
Our Friend (2019)
Performance score7.3
Our Friend asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Dane Faucheux is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Peter Bretter
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)
Performance score7.3
Forgetting Sarah Marshall asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Peter Bretter 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 Vector (voice)
Start here. Despicable Me is the clearest statement of what Jason Segel does — accessible, 95 minutes, and rated 7.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Jason 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.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)
Keeps the comedy register of Despicable Me but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Muppets (2011)
Keeps the comedy register of Forgetting Sarah Marshall but asks for a colder reading of it.
Our Friend (2019)
A deliberate change of key after The Muppets — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Mooned (2023)
Same director as Our Friend, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Judd Apatow
Director
2 films together
Notably Knocked Up
Nicholas Stoller
Director
2 films together
Notably Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Jake Kasdan
Director
2 films together
Notably Bad Teacher
Charlie McDowell
Director
2 films together
Notably The Discovery
James Merendino
Director
1 film together
Notably SLC Punk
John Hamburg
Director
1 film together
Notably I Love You, Man
Rob Letterman
Director
1 film together
Notably Gulliver's Travels
Chris Renaud
Director
1 film together
Notably Despicable Me
Will Gluck
Director
1 film together
Notably Friends with Benefits
James Bobin
Director
1 film together
Notably The Muppets
Evan Goldberg
Director
1 film together
Notably This Is the End
Jorma Taccone
Director
1 film together
Notably Over Your Dead Body
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Nicholas Stoller
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
Forgetting Sarah MarshallJudd Apatow
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
Knocked UpCharlie McDowell
Director
2 films together · 6.1 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The DiscoveryJake Kasdan
Director
2 films together · 5.8 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Bad TeacherChris Renaud
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Despicable MeJames Merendino
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SLC PunkWill Gluck
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Friends with BenefitsJames Bobin
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The MuppetsJorma Taccone
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Over Your Dead BodyJohn Hamburg
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
I Love You, ManEvan Goldberg
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
This Is the EndRob Letterman
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Gulliver's TravelsSix 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
Despicable Me
as Vector (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
Our Friend
as Dane Faucheux
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Despicable Me
as Vector (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Friends with Benefits
as Brice (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Despicable Me
as Vector (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. Jason Segel 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
28 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
16 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
Despicable Me
as Vector (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Over Your Dead Body
as Dan
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Our Friend
as Dane Faucheux
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Discovery
as Will Harbor
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Over Your Dead Body
as Dan
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
This Is the End
as Jason Segel (uncredited)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
SLC Punk
as Mike
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Windfall
as Nobody
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
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Reference
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