Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3040
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Jason Marsden represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 33 years in, and Jason is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Jason Marsden appears in 11 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Jason. Tarzan is the clearest case: a film rated 7.5 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 comedy, horror, action. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Kristoffer Polaha, Kali Bailey, Christopher Berkeley and others, Jason Marsden 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.
Tarzan (1999) as Additional Voices (voice) · Monsters University (2013) as Additional Voices (voice) · Hocus Pocus (1993) as Thackery Binx (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #3040 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
11
1993–2026
Career length
33 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.5
Tarzan
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.4
Tarzan
Most frequent director
Kevin Lima
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Kevin Lima
Most common genre
Comedy
6 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
7.1
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
6.6
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
7.2 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Tarzan, The Lion King II: Simba's Pride, A Goofy Movie — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
7.2
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
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. Tarzan, The Lion King II: Simba's Pride, A Goofy Movie.
Most productive era
1990s
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.01 film | — | — | — |
| Action | — | — | — | 5.92 films |
| Thriller | — | — | — | 5.11 film |
| Comedy | 7.02 films | 6.21 film | 6.72 films | 5.51 film |
| Crime | — | 6.21 film | — | — |
| Romance | 7.02 films | — | — | — |
| Horror | — | — | — | 5.51 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1993Hocus Pocus
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Thackery Binx (voice).
Career peak
1995A Goofy Movie
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
1999Tarzan
7.5 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
2026Mimics
The current state of the argument, as Dom Fletcher.
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 Kovu (voice)
Directed by Darrell Rooney
as Max (voice)
Directed by Kevin Lima
as Additional Voices (voice)
Directed by Kevin Lima
as Additional Voices (voice)
Directed by Unknown
as Thackery Binx (voice)
Directed by Kenny Ortega
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
Kovu (voice)
The Lion King II: Simba's Pride (1998)
Performance score7.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Kovu (voice) gives Jason Marsden a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Max (voice)
A Goofy Movie (1995)
Performance score7.4
A Goofy Movie asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Max (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Additional Voices (voice)
Tarzan (1999)
Performance score7.3
Tarzan asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Additional Voices (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Additional Voices (voice)
Monsters University (2013)
Performance score7.0
Monsters University asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Additional Voices (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 Kovu (voice)
Start here. The Lion King II: Simba's Pride is the clearest statement of what Jason Marsden does — accessible, 81 minutes, and rated 7.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Jason 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.
Hocus Pocus (1993)
Keeps the family register of The Lion King II: Simba's Pride but asks for a colder reading of it.
A Goofy Movie (1995)
Keeps the comedy register of Hocus Pocus but asks for a colder reading of it.
Tarzan (1999)
Same director as A Goofy Movie, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Monsters University (2013)
Keeps the family register of Tarzan but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Kevin Lima
Director
2 films together
Notably Tarzan
Kenny Ortega
Director
1 film together
Notably Hocus Pocus
Darrell Rooney
Director
1 film together
Notably The Lion King II: Simba's Pride
Dean Parisot
Director
1 film together
Notably Fun with Dick and Jane
Chris Renaud
Director
1 film together
Notably The Secret Life of Pets
Christopher Berkeley
Director
1 film together
Notably Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham
Kali Bailey
Director
1 film together
Notably The Lightning Code
Kristoffer Polaha
Director
1 film together
Notably Mimics
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Kevin Lima
Director
2 films together · 7.3 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
TarzanKenny Ortega
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hocus PocusDarrell Rooney
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Lion King II: Simba's PrideChristopher Berkeley
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Batman: The Doom That Came to GothamChris Renaud
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Secret Life of PetsDean Parisot
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fun with Dick and JaneKristoffer Polaha
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
MimicsKali Bailey
Director
1 film together · 5.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Lightning CodeSix 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
Tarzan
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
Tarzan
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
Tarzan
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
Monsters University
as Additional Voices (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Lion King II: Simba's Pride
as Kovu (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. Jason Marsden 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
33 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
Monsters University
as Additional Voices (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham
as Dick Grayson / Young Bruce Wayne (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Tarzan
as Additional Voices (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham
as Dick Grayson / Young Bruce Wayne (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Tarzan
as Additional Voices (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Lightning Code
as N.E.W.T. (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
A Goofy Movie
as Max (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Tarzan
as Additional Voices (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
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Reference
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