Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#33314
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Ayumi Ito represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 25 years in, and Ayumi is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Ayumi Ito appears in 5 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Ayumi. Chaser Game W: A Match Made in Heaven is the clearest case: a film rated 10.0 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, drama, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, drama, war. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Yū Ōta, Nobuhiko Obayashi, Michel Gondry and others, Ayumi Ito 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.
Chaser Game W: A Match Made in Heaven (2026) · Dr. Coto's Clinic (2022) as Rika Ando · All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001) as Yōko Kuno
Career snapshot
Ranked #33314 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
5
2001–2026
Career length
25 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
10.0
Chaser Game W: A Match Made in Heaven
Average Nutevio score
7.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
10.0
Chaser Game W: A Match Made in Heaven
Most frequent director
Yū Ōta
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Yū Ōta
Most common genre
Drama
4 titles
Average runtime
2h 11m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.5
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
7.2
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
2020s
8.1 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Chaser Game W: A Match Made in Heaven, Dr. Coto's Clinic, Labyrinth of Cinema — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
8.1
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
8.1
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. Tokyo!, All About Lily Chou-Chou.
Most productive era
2020s
3 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 | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.22 films | 8.82 films |
| Comedy | 6.91 film | — |
| Crime | 7.41 film | — |
| Romance | 6.91 film | 10.01 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Yōko Kuno.
First Nutevio masterpiece · Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2026Chaser Game W: A Match Made in Heaven
The first film here to clear 9.0 on our scale — a threshold fewer than one film in ten reaches. 10.0 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. The current state of the argument.
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.
5 of 5 films
as Akemi (segment "Interior Design")
Directed by Michel Gondry
as Yoshiko Kawashima
Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi
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
Chaser Game W: A Match Made in Heaven
Chaser Game W: A Match Made in Heaven (2026)
Performance score9.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. The role gives Ayumi Ito a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Yōko Kuno
All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001)
Performance score7.5
All About Lily Chou-Chou asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Yōko Kuno is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Rika Ando
Dr. Coto's Clinic (2022)
Performance score7.4
Dr. Coto's Clinic asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Rika Ando is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Akemi (segment "Interior Design")
Tokyo! (2008)
Performance score7.3
Tokyo! asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Akemi (segment "Interior Design") 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
Start here. Chaser Game W: A Match Made in Heaven is the clearest statement of what Ayumi Ito does — accessible, 84 minutes, and rated 10.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Ayumi 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.
All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001)
Keeps the drama register of Chaser Game W: A Match Made in Heaven but asks for a colder reading of it.
Tokyo! (2008)
Keeps the drama register of All About Lily Chou-Chou but asks for a colder reading of it.
Labyrinth of Cinema (2020)
Keeps the fantasy register of Tokyo! but asks for a colder reading of it.
Dr. Coto's Clinic (2022)
A deliberate change of key after Labyrinth of Cinema — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Shunji Iwai
Director
1 film together
Notably All About Lily Chou-Chou
Michel Gondry
Director
1 film together
Notably Tokyo!
Nobuhiko Obayashi
Director
1 film together
Notably Labyrinth of Cinema
Yū Ōta
Director
1 film together
Notably Chaser Game W: A Match Made in Heaven
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Yū Ōta
Director
1 film together · 10.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Chaser Game W: A Match Made in HeavenShunji Iwai
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
All About Lily Chou-ChouMichel Gondry
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Tokyo!Nobuhiko Obayashi
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Labyrinth of CinemaSix 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
Chaser Game W: A Match Made in Heaven
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Chaser Game W: A Match Made in Heaven
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Chaser Game W: A Match Made in Heaven
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Labyrinth of Cinema
as Yoshiko Kawashima
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Chaser Game W: A Match Made in Heaven
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. Ayumi Ito 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
25 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
4 catalogue titles in drama, 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
Chaser Game W: A Match Made in Heaven
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Chaser Game W: A Match Made in Heaven
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Chaser Game W: A Match Made in Heaven
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Labyrinth of Cinema
as Yoshiko Kawashima
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Chaser Game W: A Match Made in Heaven
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Chaser Game W: A Match Made in Heaven
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Tokyo!
as Akemi (segment "Interior Design")
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Tokyo!
as Akemi (segment "Interior Design")
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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