Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#12784
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Carina Lau represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 40 years in, and Carina is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Carina Lau appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Carina. Let the Bullets Fly is the clearest case: a film rated 7.8 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, action. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for action, comedy, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Stephen Chow, Tsui Hark, Jiang Wen and others, Carina Lau 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.
Let the Bullets Fly (2010) as Magistrate's wife · Days of Being Wild (1990) as Leung Fung-ying · Armour of God (1986) as Member of The Losers (uncredited)
Career snapshot
Ranked #12784 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
1986–2026
Career length
40 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.8
Let the Bullets Fly
Average Nutevio score
6.1
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.8
Let the Bullets Fly
Most frequent director
Tsui Hark
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Tsui Hark
Most common genre
Action
8 titles
Average runtime
1h 52m
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
6.6
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
7.3 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Days of Being Wild — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
7.3
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
7.3
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1980s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Armour of God.
Most productive era
2010s
4 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 | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 7.31 film | 7.01 film | 6.61 film | 6.72 films |
| Action | 7.11 film | — | 7.01 film | 6.93 films | 6.43 films |
| Comedy | 7.11 film | — | — | 3.92 films | 6.41 film |
| Crime | — | 7.31 film | 7.01 film | — | — |
| Romance | — | 7.31 film | — | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1986Armour of God
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Member of The Losers (uncredited).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
7.8 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
2026Kung Fu Soccer
The current state of the argument, as Grandmaster.
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.
10 of 10 films
as Colonel Tam Bing
Directed by Unknown
as Leung Fung-ying
Directed by Wong Kar-Wai
as Member of The Losers (uncredited)
Directed by Jackie Chan
as Mary Hon
Directed by Andrew Lau Wai-Keung
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
Magistrate's wife
Let the Bullets Fly (2010)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Magistrate's wife gives Carina Lau a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Colonel Tam Bing
Warriors of Future (2022)
Performance score7.4
Warriors of Future asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Colonel Tam Bing is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Leung Fung-ying
Days of Being Wild (1990)
Performance score7.4
Days of Being Wild asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Leung Fung-ying is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Member of The Losers (uncredited)
Armour of God (1986)
Performance score7.0
Armour of God asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Member of The Losers (uncredited) 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 Magistrate's wife
Start here. Let the Bullets Fly is the clearest statement of what Carina Lau does — accessible, 132 minutes, and rated 7.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Carina 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.
Armour of God (1986)
Keeps the action register of Let the Bullets Fly but asks for a colder reading of it.
Days of Being Wild (1990)
A deliberate change of key after Armour of God — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Infernal Affairs III (2003)
Keeps the crime register of Days of Being Wild but asks for a colder reading of it.
Warriors of Future (2022)
Keeps the action register of Infernal Affairs III but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Tsui Hark
Director
2 films together
Notably Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame
Jackie Chan
Director
1 film together
Notably Armour of God
Wong Kar-Wai
Director
1 film together
Notably Days of Being Wild
Andrew Lau Wai-Keung
Director
1 film together
Notably Infernal Affairs III
Jiang Wen
Director
1 film together
Notably Let the Bullets Fly
Stephen Chow
Director
1 film together
Notably Kung Fu Soccer
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Tsui Hark
Director
2 films together · 6.4 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom FlameJiang Wen
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Let the Bullets FlyWong Kar-Wai
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Days of Being WildJackie Chan
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Armour of GodAndrew Lau Wai-Keung
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Infernal Affairs IIIStephen Chow
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Kung Fu SoccerSix 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
Let the Bullets Fly
as Magistrate's wife
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Days of Being Wild
as Leung Fung-ying
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Let the Bullets Fly
as Magistrate's wife
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Armour of God
as Member of The Losers (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Let the Bullets Fly
as Magistrate's wife
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. Carina Lau 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
40 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.
Action Legend
Awarded
8 catalogue titles in action, 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
Let the Bullets Fly
as Magistrate's wife
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Let the Bullets Fly
as Magistrate's wife
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Days of Being Wild
as Leung Fung-ying
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings
as Wu Zetian
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Let the Bullets Fly
as Magistrate's wife
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame
as Wu Zetian
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Days of Being Wild
as Leung Fung-ying
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Kung Fu Soccer
as Grandmaster
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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