Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#2433
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Utkarsh Ambudkar works on versatility rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Utkarsh Ambudkar appears in 16 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Utkarsh. tick, tick... BOOM! is the clearest case: a film rated 7.6 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 thriller, comedy, family. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Mike Roberts, Angela Stempel, Roshan Sethi and others, Utkarsh Ambudkar 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.
tick, tick... BOOM! (2021) as Todd · Free Guy (2021) as Mouser · Lulu Is a Rhinoceros (2025) as Hip-Hop (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #2433 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
16
2009–2026
Career length
17 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.6
tick, tick... BOOM!
Average Nutevio score
5.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.6
tick, tick... BOOM!
Most frequent director
Tim Story
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Tim Story
Most common genre
Comedy
11 titles
Average runtime
1h 32m
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
6.2
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
2000s
6.3 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. After.Life — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.3
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.3
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2000s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. After.Life.
Most productive era
2020s
12 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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.31 film | 6.61 film | 6.92 films |
| Action | — | 5.92 films | — |
| Thriller | 6.31 film | — | 0.01 film |
| Comedy | — | 6.13 films | 5.68 films |
| Romance | — | — | 7.11 film |
| Horror | 6.31 film | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2009After.Life
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Assistant (uncredited).
Highest rated performance
7.6 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2026Backyard Sports: The Animated Special
The current state of the argument, as Achmed Khan (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 Hip-Hop (voice)
Directed by Angela Stempel
as Mouser
Directed by Shawn Levy
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
Hip-Hop (voice)
Lulu Is a Rhinoceros (2025)
Performance score7.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Hip-Hop (voice) gives Utkarsh Ambudkar a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Mouser
Free Guy (2021)
Performance score7.6
Free Guy asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mouser is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Self
We Are Freestyle Love Supreme (2020)
Performance score7.5
We Are Freestyle Love Supreme asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Max Vora
The Broken Hearts Gallery (2020)
Performance score7.5
The Broken Hearts Gallery asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Max Vora 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 Hip-Hop (voice)
Start here. Lulu Is a Rhinoceros is the clearest statement of what Utkarsh Ambudkar does — accessible, 47 minutes, and rated 7.4 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Utkarsh 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.
We Are Freestyle Love Supreme (2020)
A deliberate change of key after Lulu Is a Rhinoceros — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Broken Hearts Gallery (2020)
A deliberate change of key after We Are Freestyle Love Supreme — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Free Guy (2021)
Keeps the comedy register of The Broken Hearts Gallery but asks for a colder reading of it.
tick, tick... BOOM! (2021)
A deliberate change of key after Free Guy — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Tim Story
Director
2 films together
Notably Tom & Jerry
Kyle Newacheck
Director
1 film together
Notably Game Over, Man!
Natalie Krinsky
Director
1 film together
Notably The Broken Hearts Gallery
Andrew Fried
Director
1 film together
Notably We Are Freestyle Love Supreme
Lin-Manuel Miranda
Director
1 film together
Notably tick, tick... BOOM!
Shawn Levy
Director
1 film together
Notably Free Guy
John Donkin
Director
1 film together
Notably The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild
Sarah Adina Smith
Director
1 film together
Notably The Drop
Roshan Sethi
Director
1 film together
Notably World's Best
Angela Stempel
Director
1 film together
Notably Lulu Is a Rhinoceros
Mike Roberts
Director
1 film together
Notably Backyard Sports: The Animated Special
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Tim Story
Director
2 films together · 6.6 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Tom & JerryLin-Manuel Miranda
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
tick, tick... BOOM!Shawn Levy
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Free GuyAngela Stempel
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Lulu Is a RhinocerosAndrew Fried
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
We Are Freestyle Love SupremeNatalie Krinsky
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Broken Hearts GalleryJohn Donkin
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Ice Age Adventures of Buck WildRoshan Sethi
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
World's BestKyle Newacheck
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Game Over, Man!Sarah Adina Smith
Director
1 film together · 4.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The DropMike Roberts
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Backyard Sports: The Animated SpecialSix 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
tick, tick... BOOM!
as Todd
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
tick, tick... BOOM!
as Todd
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
tick, tick... BOOM!
as Todd
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
After.Life
as Assistant (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Lulu Is a Rhinoceros
as Hip-Hop (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. Utkarsh Ambudkar 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.
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
11 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
tick, tick... BOOM!
as Todd
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
After.Life
as Assistant (uncredited)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
tick, tick... BOOM!
as Todd
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
After.Life
as Assistant (uncredited)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Free Guy
as Mouser
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Ride Along 2
as Amir
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
My Dead Friend Zoe
as Alex
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Tom & Jerry
as Real Estate Rat (voice)
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
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and drama
Edward Norton
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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