Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#7607
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Chris Kattan represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 26 years in, and Chris is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Chris Kattan appears in 11 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Chris. Leo 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 romance, comedy, family. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with David Wachtenheim, Sam Macaroni, Genndy Tartakovsky and others, Chris Kattan 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.
Leo (2023) as Alligator #1 (voice) · Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015) as Kakie (voice) · A Night at the Roxbury (1998) as Doug Butabi
Career snapshot
Ranked #7607 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
11
1998–2024
Career length
26 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.4
Leo
Average Nutevio score
5.3
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
Leo
Most frequent director
David Wachtenheim
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With David Wachtenheim
Most common genre
Comedy
10 titles
Average runtime
1h 34m
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
1990s
6.0 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. House on Haunted Hill, A Night at the Roxbury — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
6.0
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
6.1
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. House on Haunted Hill, A Night at the Roxbury.
Most productive era
2020s
4 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Action | — | 5.91 film | 5.02 films | — |
| Comedy | 6.51 film | 6.02 films | 5.63 films | 4.44 films |
| Crime | — | 6.11 film | — | — |
| Romance | 6.51 film | — | — | 0.01 film |
| Horror | 5.61 film | — | 4.71 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Career peak
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Doug Butabi. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
2023Leo
7.4 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
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.
11 of 11 films
as Alligator #1 (voice)
Directed by David Wachtenheim
as Doug Butabi
Directed by John Fortenberry
as Kakie (voice)
Directed by Genndy Tartakovsky
Directed by Unknown
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
Alligator #1 (voice)
Leo (2023)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Alligator #1 (voice) gives Chris Kattan a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Doug Butabi
A Night at the Roxbury (1998)
Performance score7.2
A Night at the Roxbury asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Doug Butabi is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Kakie (voice)
Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015)
Performance score6.7
Hotel Transylvania 2 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Kakie (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Say a Little Prayer
Say a Little Prayer (2024)
Performance score6.5
Say a Little Prayer 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 movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Alligator #1 (voice)
Start here. Leo is the clearest statement of what Chris Kattan does — accessible, 102 minutes, and rated 7.4 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Chris 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.
A Night at the Roxbury (1998)
Keeps the comedy register of Leo but asks for a colder reading of it.
Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015)
Keeps the comedy register of A Night at the Roxbury but asks for a colder reading of it.
Too Soon: Comedy After 9/11 (2021)
Keeps the comedy register of Hotel Transylvania 2 but asks for a colder reading of it.
Say a Little Prayer (2024)
Same director as Too Soon: Comedy After 9/11, 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.
John Fortenberry
Director
1 film together
Notably A Night at the Roxbury
William Malone
Director
1 film together
Notably House on Haunted Hill
Malcolm D. Lee
Director
1 film together
Notably Undercover Brother
Andrew Fleming
Director
1 film together
Notably Nancy Drew
Frank Coraci
Director
1 film together
Notably The Ridiculous 6
Genndy Tartakovsky
Director
1 film together
Notably Hotel Transylvania 2
Sam Macaroni
Director
1 film together
Notably Guest House
David Wachtenheim
Director
1 film together
Notably Leo
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
David Wachtenheim
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
LeoGenndy Tartakovsky
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hotel Transylvania 2John Fortenberry
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Night at the RoxburyAndrew Fleming
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Nancy DrewMalcolm D. Lee
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Undercover BrotherWilliam Malone
Director
1 film together · 5.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
House on Haunted HillSam Macaroni
Director
1 film together · 5.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Guest HouseFrank Coraci
Director
1 film together · 5.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Ridiculous 6Six 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
Leo
as Alligator #1 (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
Hotel Transylvania 2
as Kakie (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
Leo
as Alligator #1 (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Leo
as Alligator #1 (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Leo
as Alligator #1 (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. Chris Kattan 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
26 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
Leo
as Alligator #1 (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Nancy Drew
as Burglar
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Hotel Transylvania 2
as Kakie (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Nancy Drew
as Burglar
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Leo
as Alligator #1 (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Ridiculous 6
as John Wilkes Booth
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Hotel Transylvania 2
as Kakie (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Leo
as Alligator #1 (voice)
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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