Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#19629
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Zak Orth 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.
Zak Orth appears in 13 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Zak. Romeo + Juliet is the clearest case: a film rated 6.9 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, quiet performance, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for comedy, tv movie, romance. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Claire Scanlon, David Wain, Amy Heckerling and others, Zak Orth 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.
Romeo + Juliet (1996) as Gregory · Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) as Adam · Music and Lyrics (2007) as David Newbert
Career snapshot
Ranked #19629 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
13
1996–2020
Career length
24 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.9
Romeo + Juliet
Average Nutevio score
6.1
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
6.8
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Most frequent director
David Wain
3 films together
Longest collaboration
3×
With David Wain
Most common genre
Comedy
10 titles
Average runtime
1h 40m
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
6.3
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
6.5 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Snow Falling on Cedars, Romeo + Juliet — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
6.5
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
6.4
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. Snow Falling on Cedars, Romeo + Juliet.
Most productive era
2000s
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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.52 films | 6.33 films | 5.91 film | — |
| Action | — | — | 6.31 film | — |
| Comedy | — | 5.95 films | 5.84 films | 6.41 film |
| Romance | 6.52 films | 6.44 films | 5.62 films | — |
| Horror | — | — | 5.31 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
1996Romeo + Juliet
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Gregory. 6.9 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
2020Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the Reverend
The current state of the argument, as Cody Santimonio.
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.
13 of 13 films
as Gregory
Directed by Baz Luhrmann
as Cody Santimonio
Directed by Claire Scanlon
as Renfield
Directed by Amy Heckerling
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
Gregory
Romeo + Juliet (1996)
Performance score6.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Gregory gives Zak Orth a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Adam
Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)
Performance score6.7
Vicky Cristina Barcelona asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Adam is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Cody Santimonio
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the Reverend (2020)
Performance score6.5
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the Reverend asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Cody Santimonio is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Waiter With Pole
They Came Together (2014)
Performance score6.5
They Came Together asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Waiter With Pole 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 Gregory
Start here. Romeo + Juliet is the clearest statement of what Zak Orth does — accessible, 120 minutes, and rated 6.9 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Zak 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.
Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)
Keeps the romance register of Romeo + Juliet but asks for a colder reading of it.
Vamps (2012)
Keeps the romance register of Vicky Cristina Barcelona but asks for a colder reading of it.
They Came Together (2014)
Keeps the comedy register of Vamps but asks for a colder reading of it.
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the Reverend (2020)
Keeps the comedy register of They Came Together but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Woody Allen
Director
3 films together
Notably Vicky Cristina Barcelona
David Wain
Director
3 films together
Notably Wet Hot American Summer
Baz Luhrmann
Director
1 film together
Notably Romeo + Juliet
Ben Younger
Director
1 film together
Notably Prime
Marc Lawrence
Director
1 film together
Notably Music and Lyrics
Adam McKay
Director
1 film together
Notably The Other Guys
Amy Heckerling
Director
1 film together
Notably Vamps
Claire Scanlon
Director
1 film together
Notably Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the Reverend
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Woody Allen
Director
3 films together · 6.3 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Vicky Cristina BarcelonaDavid Wain
Director
3 films together · 5.5 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Wet Hot American SummerBaz Luhrmann
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Romeo + JulietMarc Lawrence
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Music and LyricsClaire Scanlon
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the ReverendAdam McKay
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 Other GuysBen Younger
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
PrimeAmy Heckerling
Director
1 film together · 5.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
VampsSix 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
Romeo + Juliet
as Gregory
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Romeo + Juliet
as Gregory
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Romeo + Juliet
as Gregory
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Other Guys
as Accountant
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Romeo + Juliet
as Gregory
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. Zak Orth 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
24 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
Romeo + Juliet
as Gregory
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Other Guys
as Accountant
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
as Adam
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Romeo + Juliet
as Gregory
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Other Guys
as Accountant
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Other Guys
as Accountant
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Prime
as Randall
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Romeo + Juliet
as Gregory
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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