Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#16108
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Richard Kiel represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 47 years in, and Richard is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Richard Kiel appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Richard. Tangled is the clearest case: a film rated 7.8 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, screen presence. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for adventure, family, animation. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Byron Howard, Dennis Dugan, Clint Eastwood and others, Richard Kiel 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.
Tangled (2010) as Vlad (voice) · Pale Rider (1985) as Club · The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) as Jaws
Career snapshot
Ranked #16108 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
1963–2010
Career length
47 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.8
Tangled
Average Nutevio score
6.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.6
Tangled
Most frequent director
Lewis Gilbert
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Lewis Gilbert
Most common genre
Adventure
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 50m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.0
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
6.9
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
7.8 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Tangled — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.8
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
7.6
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. Roustabout, The Nutty Professor.
Most productive era
1970s
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 | 1960s | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2010s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.31 film | 7.01 film | — | — |
| Action | — | 6.63 films | — | — | — |
| Thriller | — | 6.63 films | — | — | — |
| Comedy | 6.51 film | 6.61 film | — | 6.71 film | — |
| Crime | — | 6.61 film | — | — | — |
| Romance | 6.21 film | 6.61 film | — | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Man in Gym (uncredited).
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2010Tangled
7.8 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. The current state of the argument, as Vlad (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.
9 of 9 films
as Vlad (voice)
Directed by Byron Howard
as Jaws
Directed by Lewis Gilbert
as Club
Directed by Clint Eastwood
as Man in Gym (uncredited)
Directed by Jerry Lewis
as Mr. Larson
Directed by Dennis Dugan
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
Vlad (voice)
Tangled (2010)
Performance score7.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Vlad (voice) gives Richard Kiel a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Jaws
The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
Performance score7.0
The Spy Who Loved Me asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Jaws is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Club
Pale Rider (1985)
Performance score6.9
Pale Rider asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Club is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Man in Gym (uncredited)
The Nutty Professor (1963)
Performance score6.7
The Nutty Professor asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Man in Gym (uncredited) 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 Vlad (voice)
Start here. Tangled is the clearest statement of what Richard Kiel does — accessible, 100 minutes, and rated 7.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Richard 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 Nutty Professor (1963)
A deliberate change of key after Tangled — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
A deliberate change of key after The Nutty Professor — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Pale Rider (1985)
A deliberate change of key after The Spy Who Loved Me — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Happy Gilmore (1996)
A deliberate change of key after Pale Rider — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Lewis Gilbert
Director
2 films together
Notably The Spy Who Loved Me
Jerry Lewis
Director
1 film together
Notably The Nutty Professor
John Rich
Director
1 film together
Notably Roustabout
Arthur Hiller
Director
1 film together
Notably Silver Streak
Guy Hamilton
Director
1 film together
Notably Force 10 from Navarone
Clint Eastwood
Director
1 film together
Notably Pale Rider
Dennis Dugan
Director
1 film together
Notably Happy Gilmore
Byron Howard
Director
1 film together
Notably Tangled
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Lewis Gilbert
Director
2 films together · 6.5 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The Spy Who Loved MeByron Howard
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
TangledClint Eastwood
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Pale RiderDennis Dugan
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Happy GilmoreArthur Hiller
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Silver StreakJerry Lewis
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Nutty ProfessorGuy Hamilton
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Force 10 from NavaroneJohn Rich
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
RoustaboutSix 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
Tangled
as Vlad (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
Tangled
as Vlad (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
Tangled
as Vlad (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Roustabout
as Strongman (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Tangled
as Vlad (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. Richard Kiel 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
47 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Adventure Legend
Awarded
4 catalogue titles in adventure, 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
Tangled
as Vlad (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Spy Who Loved Me
as Jaws
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Roustabout
as Strongman (uncredited)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Silver Streak
as Reace
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Tangled
as Vlad (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Spy Who Loved Me
as Jaws
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Silver Streak
as Reace
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Roustabout
as Strongman (uncredited)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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