Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#55745
of 909177 performers
Top 10%
Cao Cuifen represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 35 years in, and Cao is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Cao Cuifen appears in 4 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Cao. Raise the Red Lantern is the clearest case: a film rated 7.5 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, drama, emotional range. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, comedy, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Zhang Yimou, Cao Cuifen 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.
Raise the Red Lantern (1991) as Zhuoyun · Decoded (2024) as 老年容必瑜 · If I Were You (2026)
Career snapshot
Ranked #55745 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
4
1991–2026
Career length
35 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.5
Raise the Red Lantern
Average Nutevio score
4.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.9
Raise the Red Lantern
Most frequent director
Zhang Yimou
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Zhang Yimou
Most common genre
Drama
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 37m
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
6.4
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
7.5 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Raise the Red Lantern — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
7.5
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
7.9
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. Raise the Red Lantern.
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 | 1990s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.51 film | 4.13 films |
| Thriller | — | 6.21 film |
| Comedy | — | 6.01 film |
| Romance | — | 6.01 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Zhuoyun. 7.5 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
2026If I Were You
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.
4 of 4 films
Directed by Unknown
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
Zhuoyun
Raise the Red Lantern (1991)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Zhuoyun gives Cao Cuifen a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
If I Were You
If I Were You (2026)
Performance score6.5
If I Were You asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. The role is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Grandma
Back to the South (2024)
Performance score6.5
Back to the South asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Grandma is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
老年容必瑜
Decoded (2024)
Performance score6.5
Decoded asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. 老年容必瑜 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 Zhuoyun
Start here. Raise the Red Lantern is the clearest statement of what Cao Cuifen does — accessible, 125 minutes, and rated 7.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Cao 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.
Back to the South (2024)
Keeps the drama register of Raise the Red Lantern but asks for a colder reading of it.
Decoded (2024)
Same director as Back to the South, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
If I Were You (2026)
Same director as Decoded, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Zhang Yimou
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Raise the Red LanternSix 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
Raise the Red Lantern
as Zhuoyun
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Decoded
as 老年容必瑜
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Raise the Red Lantern
as Zhuoyun
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Decoded
as 老年容必瑜
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Raise the Red Lantern
as Zhuoyun
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. Cao Cuifen 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
35 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
Raise the Red Lantern
as Zhuoyun
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Raise the Red Lantern
as Zhuoyun
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Decoded
as 老年容必瑜
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Raise the Red Lantern
as Zhuoyun
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Raise the Red Lantern
as Zhuoyun
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Raise the Red Lantern
as Zhuoyun
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
If I Were You
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
If I Were You
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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