Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#206
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Ricky Gervais 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.
Ricky Gervais appears in 22 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Ricky. The Little Prince is the clearest case: a film rated 7.6 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 documentary, action, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Richard Fitzpatrick, Peter Hastings, John L. Spencer and others, Ricky Gervais 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.
The Little Prince (2015) as The Conceited Man (voice) · Dog Man (2025) as Flippy (voice) · Ricky Gervais: SuperNature (2022) as Self
Career snapshot
Ranked #206 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
22
2005–2026
Career length
21 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.6
The Little Prince
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.6
The Little Prince
Most frequent director
John L. Spencer
3 films together
Longest collaboration
3×
With John L. Spencer
Most common genre
Comedy
17 titles
Average runtime
1h 31m
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
6.3 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, The Invention of Lying, How to Lose Friends & Alienate People — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.3
Across 7 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
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. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, The Invention of Lying, How to Lose Friends & Alienate People.
Most productive era
2020s
8 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 | 6.01 film | 6.51 film | — |
| Action | 6.31 film | 4.71 film | 7.02 films |
| Comedy | 6.16 films | 6.06 films | 7.15 films |
| Crime | — | 6.31 film | — |
| Romance | 6.53 films | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2005Valiant
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Bugsy (voice).
Highest rated performance
7.6 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
2022Ricky Gervais: SuperNature
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2026England 2006: The Golden Generation
The current state of the argument, as Self (archive footage).
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.
22 of 22 films
as Flippy (voice)
Directed by Peter Hastings
as The Conceited Man (voice)
Directed by Mark Osborne
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
Self
Ricky Gervais: SuperNature (2022)
Performance score8.0
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Self gives Ricky Gervais a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Self
Ricky Gervais: Mortality (2025)
Performance score7.7
Ricky Gervais: Mortality asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Self
Ricky Gervais: Armageddon (2023)
Performance score7.7
Ricky Gervais: Armageddon asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Flippy (voice)
Dog Man (2025)
Performance score7.5
Dog Man asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Flippy (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 Self
Start here. Ricky Gervais: SuperNature is the clearest statement of what Ricky Gervais does — accessible, 64 minutes, and rated 7.4 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Ricky 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.
The Little Prince (2015)
A deliberate change of key after Ricky Gervais: SuperNature — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Ricky Gervais: Armageddon (2023)
A deliberate change of key after The Little Prince — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Ricky Gervais: Mortality (2025)
Same director as Ricky Gervais: Armageddon, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Dog Man (2025)
Keeps the comedy register of Ricky Gervais: Mortality but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Shawn Levy
Director
3 films together
Notably Night at the Museum
John L. Spencer
Director
3 films together
Notably Ricky Gervais: SuperNature
Ricky Gervais
Director
2 films together
Notably Cemetery Junction
James Bobin
Director
2 films together
Notably The Muppets
Christopher Guest
Director
1 film together
Notably For Your Consideration
Matthew Vaughn
Director
1 film together
Notably Stardust
Robert B. Weide
Director
1 film together
Notably How to Lose Friends & Alienate People
Robert Rodriguez
Director
1 film together
Notably Spy Kids: All the Time in the World
Mark Osborne
Director
1 film together
Notably The Little Prince
George Michael
Director
1 film together
Notably George Michael: Freedom Uncut
Chris Bailey
Director
1 film together
Notably Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank
Peter Hastings
Director
1 film together
Notably Dog Man
Richard Fitzpatrick
Director
1 film together
Notably England 2006: The Golden Generation
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
John L. Spencer
Director
3 films together · 7.2 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Ricky Gervais: SuperNatureShawn Levy
Director
3 films together · 6.4 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Night at the MuseumJames Bobin
Director
2 films together · 6.5 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The MuppetsRicky Gervais
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
Cemetery JunctionMark Osborne
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Little PrincePeter Hastings
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Dog ManMatthew Vaughn
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
StardustGeorge Michael
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
George Michael: Freedom UncutChris Bailey
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Paws of Fury: The Legend of HankRobert B. Weide
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
How to Lose Friends & Alienate PeopleChristopher Guest
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
For Your ConsiderationRobert Rodriguez
Director
1 film together · 4.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Spy Kids: All the Time in the WorldRichard Fitzpatrick
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
England 2006: The Golden GenerationSix 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
Stardust
as Ferdy the Fence
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
The Little Prince
as The Conceited Man (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
The Little Prince
as The Conceited Man (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Muppets
as Himself (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Ricky Gervais: SuperNature
as Self
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. Ricky Gervais 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
21 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
17 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
The Little Prince
as The Conceited Man (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Dog Man
as Flippy (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Little Prince
as The Conceited Man (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Little Prince
as The Conceited Man (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Dog Man
as Flippy (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Dog Man
as Flippy (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Valiant
as Bugsy (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Night at the Museum
as Dr. McPhee
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Reference
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