Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#2163
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Taran Killam 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.
Taran Killam appears in 13 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Taran. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse 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 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, science fiction, adventure. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Joaquim Dos Santos, Ben Ketai, Malcolm D. Lee and others, Taran Killam 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.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) as Web-Slinger (voice) · 12 Years a Slave (2013) as Hamilton · The Heat (2013) as Adam
Career snapshot
Ranked #2163 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
13
2002–2023
Career length
21 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.5
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.3
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Most frequent director
Shawn Levy
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Shawn Levy
Most common genre
Comedy
10 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
6.4
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
2020s
7.4 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, River Wild — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
7.4
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
7.3
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. Epic Movie, Just Married, Big Fat Liar.
Most productive era
2010s
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 | — | 6.82 films | — |
| Action | — | 5.83 films | 8.51 film |
| Thriller | — | — | 6.31 film |
| Comedy | 5.23 films | 5.97 films | — |
| Crime | — | 6.61 film | — |
| Romance | 5.81 film | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2002Big Fat Liar
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Bret Callaway.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2023Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
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
2023River Wild
The current state of the argument, as Gray.
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.
13 of 13 films
as Web-Slinger (voice)
Directed by Joaquim Dos Santos
as Hamilton
Directed by Steve McQueen
as Gray
Directed by Ben Ketai
as Stewart
Directed by Malcolm D. Lee
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
Web-Slinger (voice)
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)
Performance score8.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Web-Slinger (voice) gives Taran Killam a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Hamilton
12 Years a Slave (2013)
Performance score7.8
12 Years a Slave asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Hamilton is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Gray
River Wild (2023)
Performance score6.8
River Wild asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Gray is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Adam
The Heat (2013)
Performance score6.6
The Heat asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Adam 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 Web-Slinger (voice)
Start here. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is the clearest statement of what Taran Killam does — accessible, 140 minutes, and rated 8.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Taran 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.
12 Years a Slave (2013)
A deliberate change of key after Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Heat (2013)
A deliberate change of key after 12 Years a Slave — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Night School (2018)
Keeps the comedy register of The Heat but asks for a colder reading of it.
River Wild (2023)
A deliberate change of key after Night School — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Shawn Levy
Director
2 films together
Notably Big Fat Liar
Aaron Seltzer
Director
1 film together
Notably Epic Movie
Paul Feig
Director
1 film together
Notably The Heat
Dennis Dugan
Director
1 film together
Notably Grown Ups 2
Steve McQueen
Director
1 film together
Notably 12 Years a Slave
Jonathan Liebesman
Director
1 film together
Notably Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Seth MacFarlane
Director
1 film together
Notably Ted 2
Taran Killam
Director
1 film together
Notably Killing Gunther
Malcolm D. Lee
Director
1 film together
Notably Night School
Ben Ketai
Director
1 film together
Notably River Wild
Joaquim Dos Santos
Director
1 film together
Notably Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Shawn Levy
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
Big Fat LiarJoaquim Dos Santos
Director
1 film together · 8.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-VerseSteve McQueen
Director
1 film together · 8.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
12 Years a SlavePaul Feig
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 HeatBen Ketai
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
River WildSeth MacFarlane
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Ted 2Dennis Dugan
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Grown Ups 2Malcolm D. Lee
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Night SchoolJonathan Liebesman
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Teenage Mutant Ninja TurtlesTaran Killam
Director
1 film together · 4.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Killing GuntherAaron Seltzer
Director
1 film together · 3.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Epic MovieSix 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
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
as Web-Slinger (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
12 Years a Slave
as Hamilton
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
as Web-Slinger (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Grown Ups 2
as Male Cheerleader
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
as Web-Slinger (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. Taran Killam 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
10 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
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
as Web-Slinger (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
as Web-Slinger (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
12 Years a Slave
as Hamilton
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
River Wild
as Gray
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
as Web-Slinger (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
as Web-Slinger (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
12 Years a Slave
as Hamilton
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
as Web-Slinger (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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Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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