Tim Allen
Tim Allen is an actor, born 1953.
Tim Allen was a stand-up comic with one very marketable idea, that American men are ridiculous about tools and cars, and in 1991 that idea became Home Improvement, a sitcom that ran for most of the decade and won him a Golden Globe. Four years into the run he took a voice job for a computer animation studio nobody had heard of.
Buzz Lightyear is the best thing he has done, and the reason is technical. The joke is a toy who does not know he is a toy, and Allen plays the delusion completely straight: the clipped mission-log delivery, the total absence of irony. Played knowingly, the character would be worthless. Played this way, the sequels keep finding new corners of the same confusion, and he won an Annie for it.
The rest of the filmography is a peculiar shelf. The Santa Clause films made a fortune and are exactly what they look like. Christmas with the Kranks, Wild Hogs and Jungle 2 Jungle are the kind of studio comedy that stopped being made for good reasons. The genuine outlier is Galaxy Quest, where he plays a washed-up television captain trading on a part he has come to hate, and gets to be vain, ashamed and finally decent inside one film. He returned to the sitcom form for Last Man Standing and later The Santa Clauses, and has voiced Buzz for three decades.
Movies (37)
- Toy Story 5 (2026)
- Toy Story (1995)
- Toy Story 4 (2019)
- Toy Story 2 (1999)
- Toy Story 3 (2010)
- Toy Story That Time Forgot (2014)
- Galaxy Quest (1999)
- Wild Hogs (2007)
- Hawaiian Vacation (2011)
- The Santa Clause 2 (2002)
- Partysaurus Rex (2012)
- Zoom (2006)
- Small Fry (2011)
- Christmas with the Kranks (2004)
- Jungle 2 Jungle (1997)
- Big Trouble (2002)
- The Shaggy Dog (2006)
- The Santa Clause (1994)
- The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause (2006)
- Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins (2000)
- Redbelt (2008)
- Joe Somebody (2001)
- The Pixar Story (2007)
- Beyond Infinity: Buzz and the Journey to Lightyear (2022)
- For Richer or Poorer (1997)
- Disney 100: Remember That (2023)
- Toy Story at 20: To Infinity and Beyond (2015)
- Meet Wally Sparks (1997)
- El Camino Christmas (2017)
- Toy Story 6
TV (14)
- Home Improvement (1991)
- Last Man Standing (2011)
- The Wonderful World of Disney (1997)
- Shifting Gears (2025)
- The Bonnie Hunt Show (2008)
- Jay Leno's Garage (2015)
- The Santa Clauses (2022)
- Top Gear (2010)
- The D-Con Chamber (2024)
- Shatner's Raw Nerve (2008)
- Soul Man (1997)
- Norm Macdonald Live (2013)
- Cristela (2014)
- The Comedy Store (2020)
Where to start with Tim Allen
Buzz first, in order: Toy Story, then Toy Story 2, then Toy Story 3. The arc across those three is the actual achievement, certainty giving way to doubt and then to loyalty, and it is a better piece of long-form character work than anything else he has been handed. Toy Story 4 is the odd one out, and he is fine in it, though the film belongs to Bo Peep.
Galaxy Quest is the live-action peak and one of the best comedies of its decade. He plays a man who is a fraud in every way that matters and lets you watch him notice it, which is more range than the rest of this list asks for.
Home Improvement is the sitcom that built the house, and a period piece now in ways that are sometimes instructive. The Santa Clause is the family staple and holds up better than its sequels. Wild Hogs can be skipped without guilt.
Toy Story
Buzz Lightyear is the thing that will outlast everything else, and it is a better piece of voice acting than the character's fame suggests, since the joke only works if the delusion is played completely straight.
The sitcoms
Home Improvement was the biggest show in America and Last Man Standing ran nine seasons on two networks, which between them is about twenty years of the same persona doing steady work.
The films
Galaxy Quest is the best film he has been in by a distance and the one his fans push hardest. The Santa Clause is the third franchise, and the rest are the studio comedies of the 2000s.
Tim Allen on CrossBinge
- Cover Story / Film: Toy Story 5 Opens to $312M Global