Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3653
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Ed Asner represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 59 years in, and Ed is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Ed Asner appears in 16 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Ed. SEVEN 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 history, documentary, romance. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Bob Peterson, Jeffrey Schwarz, James Adolphus and others, Ed Asner 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.
SEVEN (2020) · Up (2009) as Carl Fredricksen (voice) · Faith, Hope & Love (2019) as Harry Karetas
Career snapshot
Ranked #3653 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
16
1966–2025
Career length
59 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.5
SEVEN
Average Nutevio score
5.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.5
SEVEN
Most frequent director
Bob Peterson
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Bob Peterson
Most common genre
Comedy
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 25m
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
2010s
7.5 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Faith, Hope & Love — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.5
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1980s
7.9
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1960s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. El Dorado.
Most productive era
2020s
9 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 | 1960s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.11 film | — | 7.51 film | — | — | — |
| Action | — | — | 5.91 film | — | — | — |
| Thriller | — | — | 6.72 films | — | — | — |
| Comedy | — | — | — | 7.42 films | 7.51 film | 6.93 films |
| Crime | — | — | 5.91 film | — | — | — |
| Romance | — | — | — | — | 7.51 film | 7.41 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1966El Dorado
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Bart Jason.
Career peak
2009Up
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
2020SEVEN
8.5 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
The current state of the argument, as Edward Everett (voice).
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.
16 of 16 films
as Carl Fredricksen (voice)
Directed by Pete Docter
as Carl (voice)
Directed by Bob Peterson
as Self (archive footage)
Directed by Godfrey Reggio
as Harry Karetas
Directed by Robert Krantz
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
SEVEN
SEVEN (2020)
Performance score8.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. The role gives Ed Asner a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Carl Fredricksen (voice)
Up (2009)
Performance score8.7
Up asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Carl Fredricksen (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Carl (voice)
Carl's Date (2023)
Performance score8.0
Carl's Date asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Carl (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Self (archive footage)
Koyaanisqatsi (1983)
Performance score8.0
Koyaanisqatsi asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self (archive footage) 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
Start here. SEVEN is the clearest statement of what Ed Asner does — accessible, 45 minutes, and rated 8.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Ed 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.
Koyaanisqatsi (1983)
Keeps the documentary register of SEVEN but asks for a colder reading of it.
Up (2009)
A deliberate change of key after Koyaanisqatsi — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Faith, Hope & Love (2019)
Keeps the comedy register of Up but asks for a colder reading of it.
Carl's Date (2023)
Keeps the romance register of Faith, Hope & Love but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Howard Hawks
Director
1 film together
Notably El Dorado
Godfrey Reggio
Director
1 film together
Notably Koyaanisqatsi
Oliver Stone
Director
1 film together
Notably JFK
Mikael Salomon
Director
1 film together
Notably Hard Rain
Jon Favreau
Director
1 film together
Notably Elf
Pete Docter
Director
1 film together
Notably Up
Robert Krantz
Director
1 film together
Notably Faith, Hope & Love
Kirk R. Thatcher
Director
1 film together
Notably Muppets Haunted Mansion
Luke Cormican
Director
1 film together
Notably Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules
James Adolphus
Director
1 film together
Notably Being Mary Tyler Moore
Jeffrey Schwarz
Director
1 film together
Notably Commitment to Life
Bob Peterson
Director
1 film together
Notably Carl's Date
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Pete Docter
Director
1 film together · 8.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
UpRobert Krantz
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Faith, Hope & LoveOliver Stone
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
JFKBob Peterson
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Carl's DateGodfrey Reggio
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
KoyaanisqatsiHoward Hawks
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
El DoradoLuke Cormican
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick RulesJames Adolphus
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Being Mary Tyler MooreJon Favreau
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
ElfKirk R. Thatcher
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Muppets Haunted MansionMikael Salomon
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hard RainJeffrey Schwarz
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Commitment to LifeSix 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
Up
as Carl Fredricksen (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
JFK
as Guy Bannister
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
SEVEN
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Commitment to Life
as Self (archive footage)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
SEVEN
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. Ed Asner 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
59 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
6 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
SEVEN
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
SEVEN
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Carl's Date
as Carl (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Hard Rain
as Uncle Charlie
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Up
as Carl Fredricksen (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Hard Rain
as Uncle Charlie
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Carl's Date
as Carl (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Up
as Carl Fredricksen (voice)
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
Community
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Reference
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