Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#142667
of 909177 performers
Top 25%
Irene Tsu represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 53 years in, and Irene is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Irene Tsu appears in 3 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Irene. Over the Moon is the clearest case: a film rated 7.2 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, transformation, drama. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for horror, drama, fantasy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with John Wayne, Irene Tsu 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.
Over the Moon (2020) as Grandma (voice) · Atrophy (2021) as Mrs. Sugita · The Green Berets (1968) as Lin
Career snapshot
Ranked #142667 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
3
1968–2021
Career length
53 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.2
Over the Moon
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.2
Over the Moon
Most frequent director
John Wayne
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With John Wayne
Most common genre
Drama
2 titles
Average runtime
1h 24m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.0
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
6.9
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
6.8 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Atrophy, Over the Moon — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
6.8
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
6.8
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1960s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Green Berets.
Most productive era
2020s
2 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 | 1960s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.01 film | 6.51 film |
| Horror | — | 6.51 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1968The Green Berets
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Lin.
Highest rated performance
2020Over the Moon
7.2 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak · Most recent film
2021Atrophy
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once. The current state of the argument, as Mrs. Sugita.
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.
3 of 3 films
as Grandma (voice)
Directed by Unknown
as Lin
Directed by John Wayne
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
Mrs. Sugita
Atrophy (2021)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Mrs. Sugita gives Irene Tsu a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Grandma (voice)
Over the Moon (2020)
Performance score7.1
Over the Moon asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Grandma (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Lin
The Green Berets (1968)
Performance score6.5
The Green Berets asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Lin 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 Mrs. Sugita
Start here. Atrophy is the clearest statement of what Irene Tsu does — accessible, 14 minutes, and rated 6.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Irene 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.
The Green Berets (1968)
Keeps the drama register of Atrophy but asks for a colder reading of it.
Over the Moon (2020)
A deliberate change of key after The Green Berets — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
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.
John Wayne
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Green BeretsSix 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
Over the Moon
as Grandma (voice)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Over the Moon
as Grandma (voice)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Over the Moon
as Grandma (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Over the Moon
as Grandma (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Atrophy
as Mrs. Sugita
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. Irene Tsu 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
53 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
2 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
Over the Moon
as Grandma (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Atrophy
as Mrs. Sugita
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Over the Moon
as Grandma (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Over the Moon
as Grandma (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Over the Moon
as Grandma (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Over the Moon
as Grandma (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Over the Moon
as Grandma (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Green Berets
as Lin
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Catherine Lagaʻaia
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and family
Dwayne Johnson
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and family
Rena Owen
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and family
Have your say
Community
Which Irene Tsu performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
Join the conversation
Reference
Continue exploring
Trending performers
Directors they work with
Collections to read next
