Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#3516
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
James Sie represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 28 years in, and James is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
James Sie appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without James. Chill Out, Scooby-Doo! is the clearest case: a film rated 7.4 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, comedy. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for action, comedy, fantasy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Mike Mitchell, Kyle Balda, Joe Sichta and others, James Sie 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.
Chill Out, Scooby-Doo! (2007) as Pemba Shepra (voice) · Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022) as Additional Voices (voice) · Ghost World (2001) as Asian Guy (Steven)
Career snapshot
Ranked #3516 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
1996–2024
Career length
28 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.4
Chill Out, Scooby-Doo!
Average Nutevio score
6.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.4
Chill Out, Scooby-Doo!
Most frequent director
Mike Mitchell
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Mike Mitchell
Most common genre
Comedy
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 23m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.9
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
6.7
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
2000s
7.1 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Kung Fu Panda: Secrets of the Furious Five, Chill Out, Scooby-Doo!, Ice Age: The Meltdown — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
7.1
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
7.0
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. U.S. Marshals, Chain Reaction.
Most productive era
2000s
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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 7.11 film | — | — |
| Action | 6.22 films | 6.81 film | — | 7.01 film |
| Thriller | 6.22 films | — | — | — |
| Comedy | — | 7.13 films | 6.91 film | 6.93 films |
| Crime | 6.51 film | — | — | 7.31 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1996Chain Reaction
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Ken Lim.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
7.4 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
2024Kung Fu Panda 4
The current state of the argument, as Bull Officer #2 / Ram Worker / Master Villain #1 (voice).
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 Additional Voices (voice)
Directed by Kyle Balda
as Pemba Shepra (voice)
Directed by Joe Sichta
as Asian Guy (Steven)
Directed by Terry Zwigoff
as Bull Officer #2 / Ram Worker / Master Villain #1 (voice)
Directed by Mike Mitchell
as Monkey / Viper's Dad (voice)
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.
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The defining work
#1
Additional Voices (voice)
Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Additional Voices (voice) gives James Sie a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Pemba Shepra (voice)
Chill Out, Scooby-Doo! (2007)
Performance score7.2
Chill Out, Scooby-Doo! asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Pemba Shepra (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Asian Guy (Steven)
Ghost World (2001)
Performance score7.0
Ghost World asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Asian Guy (Steven) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Bull Officer #2 / Ram Worker / Master Villain #1 (voice)
Kung Fu Panda 4 (2024)
Performance score6.9
Kung Fu Panda 4 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Bull Officer #2 / Ram Worker / Master Villain #1 (voice) 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 Additional Voices (voice)
Start here. Minions: The Rise of Gru is the clearest statement of what James Sie does — accessible, 87 minutes, and rated 7.3 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet James 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.
Ghost World (2001)
Keeps the comedy register of Minions: The Rise of Gru but asks for a colder reading of it.
Chill Out, Scooby-Doo! (2007)
Keeps the comedy register of Ghost World but asks for a colder reading of it.
Kung Fu Panda: Secrets of the Scroll (2016)
Keeps the comedy register of Chill Out, Scooby-Doo! but asks for a colder reading of it.
Kung Fu Panda 4 (2024)
Keeps the comedy register of Kung Fu Panda: Secrets of the Scroll but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Andrew Davis
Director
1 film together
Notably Chain Reaction
Stuart Baird
Director
1 film together
Notably U.S. Marshals
Terry Zwigoff
Director
1 film together
Notably Ghost World
Carlos Saldanha
Director
1 film together
Notably Ice Age: The Meltdown
Joe Sichta
Director
1 film together
Notably Chill Out, Scooby-Doo!
Kyle Balda
Director
1 film together
Notably Minions: The Rise of Gru
Mike Mitchell
Director
1 film together
Notably Kung Fu Panda 4
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Joe Sichta
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Chill Out, Scooby-Doo!Kyle Balda
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Minions: The Rise of GruTerry Zwigoff
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Ghost WorldMike Mitchell
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Kung Fu Panda 4Carlos Saldanha
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Ice Age: The MeltdownStuart Baird
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
U.S. MarshalsAndrew Davis
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Chain ReactionSix 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
Ghost World
as Asian Guy (Steven)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
The Monkey King
as Elder Monkey (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
Chill Out, Scooby-Doo!
as Pemba Shepra (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Minions: The Rise of Gru
as Additional Voices (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Minions: The Rise of Gru
as Additional Voices (voice)
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. James Sie 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
28 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.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
7 catalogue titles in comedy, 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
Chill Out, Scooby-Doo!
as Pemba Shepra (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Chill Out, Scooby-Doo!
as Pemba Shepra (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Monkey King
as Elder Monkey (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Chill Out, Scooby-Doo!
as Pemba Shepra (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Kung Fu Panda 4
as Bull Officer #2 / Ram Worker / Master Villain #1 (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Kung Fu Panda 4
as Bull Officer #2 / Ram Worker / Master Villain #1 (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Kung Fu Panda 4
as Bull Officer #2 / Ram Worker / Master Villain #1 (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Ice Age: The Meltdown
as Freaky Male (voice)
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
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Reference
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