Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#9711
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Adam Wylie represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 32 years in, and Adam is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Adam Wylie appears in 4 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Adam. The Mitchells vs. the Machines is the clearest case: a film rated 7.7 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, transformation, versatility. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for comedy, tv movie, fantasy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Alex Zamm, Mike Rianda, John Lafia and others, Adam Wylie 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 Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021) as Additional Voices (voice) · Child's Play 2 (1990) as Sammy · Under Wraps 2 (2022)
Career snapshot
Ranked #9711 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
4
1990–2022
Career length
32 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.7
The Mitchells vs. the Machines
Average Nutevio score
6.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.8
The Mitchells vs. the Machines
Most frequent director
Alex Zamm
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Alex Zamm
Most common genre
Comedy
3 titles
Average runtime
1h 37m
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
6.7
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
7.0 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Under Wraps 2, The Mitchells vs. the Machines — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
7.0
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
7.1
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. Child's Play 2, Kindergarten Cop.
Most productive era
1990s
2 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 | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Comedy | 6.11 film | 7.02 films |
| Horror | 6.51 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1990Child's Play 2
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Sammy.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2021The Mitchells vs. the Machines
7.7 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
2022Under Wraps 2
The current state of the argument.
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.
4 of 4 films
as Additional Voices (voice)
Directed by Mike Rianda
Directed by Alex Zamm
as Larry
Directed by Ivan Reitman
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
Additional Voices (voice)
The Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021)
Performance score7.5
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Additional Voices (voice) gives Adam Wylie a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Under Wraps 2
Under Wraps 2 (2022)
Performance score6.5
Under Wraps 2 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. The role is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Sammy
Child's Play 2 (1990)
Performance score6.5
Child's Play 2 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Sammy is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Larry
Kindergarten Cop (1990)
Performance score6.5
Kindergarten Cop asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Larry 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 Additional Voices (voice)
Start here. The Mitchells vs. the Machines is the clearest statement of what Adam Wylie does — accessible, 110 minutes, and rated 7.7 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Adam 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.
Child's Play 2 (1990)
A deliberate change of key after The Mitchells vs. the Machines — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Kindergarten Cop (1990)
A deliberate change of key after Child's Play 2 — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Under Wraps 2 (2022)
Keeps the comedy register of Kindergarten Cop but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Ivan Reitman
Director
1 film together
Notably Kindergarten Cop
John Lafia
Director
1 film together
Notably Child's Play 2
Mike Rianda
Director
1 film together
Notably The Mitchells vs. the Machines
Alex Zamm
Director
1 film together
Notably Under Wraps 2
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Mike Rianda
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Mitchells vs. the MachinesJohn Lafia
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Child's Play 2Alex Zamm
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Under Wraps 2Ivan Reitman
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Kindergarten CopSix 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
The Mitchells vs. the Machines
as Additional Voices (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
The Mitchells vs. the Machines
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
The Mitchells vs. the Machines
as Additional Voices (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Kindergarten Cop
as Larry
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Mitchells vs. the Machines
as Additional Voices (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. Adam Wylie 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
32 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
3 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 Mitchells vs. the Machines
as Additional Voices (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Mitchells vs. the Machines
as Additional Voices (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Mitchells vs. the Machines
as Additional Voices (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Under Wraps 2
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Mitchells vs. the Machines
as Additional Voices (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Mitchells vs. the Machines
as Additional Voices (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Mitchells vs. the Machines
as Additional Voices (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Child's Play 2
as Sammy
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Community
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Reference
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