Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#2428
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Paul Reubens represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 43 years in, and Paul is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Paul Reubens appears in 16 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Paul. The Nightmare Before Christmas is the clearest case: a film rated 8.0 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, documentary, romance. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Jessica Yu, Stanley Nelson, David O. Russell and others, Paul Reubens 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 Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) as Lock (voice) · The Blues Brothers (1980) as Waiter · Blow (2001) as Derek Foreal
Career snapshot
Ranked #2428 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
16
1980–2023
Career length
43 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.0
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.8
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Most frequent director
Tim Burton
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Tim Burton
Most common genre
Comedy
10 titles
Average runtime
1h 39m
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
6.8
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
6.8 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Quiz Lady, Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
6.8
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
6.8
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1980s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Moonwalker, Big Top Pee-wee, Flight of the Navigator.
Most productive era
1990s
6 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 | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | — | 7.41 film | — | — |
| Action | — | 6.23 films | 5.81 film | — | — |
| Comedy | 6.43 films | 6.24 films | 5.81 film | 4.31 film | 6.71 film |
| Crime | 7.71 film | — | 6.62 films | — | — |
| Romance | — | — | — | 4.31 film | — |
| Horror | — | 5.61 film | — | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Waiter.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1993The Nightmare Before Christmas
8.0 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
2023Quiz Lady
The current state of the argument, as Francine's Crush.
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 Lock (voice)
Directed by Henry Selick
as FBI Agent
Directed by Danny DeVito
as Max (voice)
Directed by Randal Kleiser
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
Lock (voice)
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Performance score8.0
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Lock (voice) gives Paul Reubens a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Waiter
The Blues Brothers (1980)
Performance score7.5
The Blues Brothers asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Waiter is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
FBI Agent
Matilda (1996)
Performance score7.3
Matilda asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. FBI Agent is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Derek Foreal
Blow (2001)
Performance score7.2
Blow asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Derek Foreal 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 Lock (voice)
Start here. The Nightmare Before Christmas is the clearest statement of what Paul Reubens does — accessible, 76 minutes, and rated 8.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Paul 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.
The Blues Brothers (1980)
A deliberate change of key after The Nightmare Before Christmas — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Flight of the Navigator (1986)
A deliberate change of key after The Blues Brothers — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Matilda (1996)
Keeps the family register of Flight of the Navigator but asks for a colder reading of it.
Blow (2001)
A deliberate change of key after Matilda — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Randal Kleiser
Director
2 films together
Notably Flight of the Navigator
Tim Burton
Director
2 films together
Notably Batman Returns
John Landis
Director
1 film together
Notably The Blues Brothers
Jerry Kramer
Director
1 film together
Notably Moonwalker
Fran Rubel Kuzui
Director
1 film together
Notably Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Henry Selick
Director
1 film together
Notably The Nightmare Before Christmas
Danny DeVito
Director
1 film together
Notably Matilda
Betty Thomas
Director
1 film together
Notably Doctor Dolittle
Ted Demme
Director
1 film together
Notably Blow
Robert Ben Garant
Director
1 film together
Notably Reno 911!: Miami
David O. Russell
Director
1 film together
Notably Accidental Love
Stanley Nelson
Director
1 film together
Notably Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy
Jessica Yu
Director
1 film together
Notably Quiz Lady
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Tim Burton
Director
2 films together · 6.8 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Batman ReturnsRandal Kleiser
Director
2 films together · 5.9 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Flight of the NavigatorHenry Selick
Director
1 film together · 8.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Nightmare Before ChristmasJohn Landis
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 Blues BrothersTed Demme
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BlowDanny DeVito
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
MatildaJerry Kramer
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
MoonwalkerStanley Nelson
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & ConspiracyJessica Yu
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Quiz LadyBetty Thomas
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Doctor DolittleRobert Ben Garant
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Reno 911!: MiamiFran Rubel Kuzui
Director
1 film together · 5.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Buffy the Vampire SlayerDavid O. Russell
Director
1 film together · 4.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Accidental LoveSix 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 Blues Brothers
as Waiter
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 Nightmare Before Christmas
as Lock (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 Nightmare Before Christmas
as Lock (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Reno 911!: Miami
as Sir Terrence
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Nightmare Before Christmas
as Lock (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. Paul Reubens 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
43 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
The Nightmare Before Christmas
as Lock (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Blow
as Derek Foreal
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Nightmare Before Christmas
as Lock (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Nightmare Before Christmas
as Lock (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Batman Returns
as Penguin's Father
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Mystery Men
as Spleen
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Blues Brothers
as Waiter
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Doctor Dolittle
as Raccoon (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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