Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#17496
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
James Taku Leung works on versatility rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
James Taku Leung appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without James. Big Hero 6 is the clearest case: a film rated 8.0 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for action, science fiction, animation. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Dan Trachtenberg, Mike Mitchell, Domee Shi and others, James Taku Leung 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.
Big Hero 6 (2014) as Additional Voice (voice) · Predator: Killer of Killers (2025) as Additional Voices (voice) · Wish Dragon (2021) as Additional Voices (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #17496 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
2005–2025
Career length
20 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.0
Big Hero 6
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.8
Wish Dragon
Most frequent director
Dan Trachtenberg
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Dan Trachtenberg
Most common genre
Animation
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 35m
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
6.4
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
2010s
8.0 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Big Hero 6 — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
8.0
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
7.7
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. Accepted, Memoirs of a Geisha.
Most productive era
2020s
6 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 | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.61 film | — | — |
| Action | — | 8.01 film | 7.42 films |
| Thriller | — | — | 3.92 films |
| Comedy | 6.51 film | 8.01 film | 7.33 films |
| Romance | 7.61 film | — | 7.61 film |
| Horror | — | — | 0.01 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Kimono Factory Worker.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2014Big Hero 6
8.0 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.
Most recent film
2025The Dedication
The current state of the argument, as Kafka.
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.
9 of 9 films
as Additional Voice (voice)
Directed by Chris Williams
as Additional Voices (voice)
Directed by Dan Trachtenberg
as Additional Voices (voice)
Directed by Chris Appelhans
as Kimono Factory Worker
Directed by Rob Marshall
as Additional Voices (voice)
Directed by Domee Shi
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 Voice (voice)
Big Hero 6 (2014)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Additional Voice (voice) gives James Taku Leung a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Additional Voices (voice)
Predator: Killer of Killers (2025)
Performance score7.6
Predator: Killer of Killers asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Additional Voices (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Additional Voices (voice)
Wish Dragon (2021)
Performance score7.4
Wish Dragon asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Additional Voices (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Kimono Factory Worker
Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)
Performance score7.4
Memoirs of a Geisha asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Kimono Factory Worker 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 Voice (voice)
Start here. Big Hero 6 is the clearest statement of what James Taku Leung does — accessible, 102 minutes, and rated 8.0 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.
Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)
A deliberate change of key after Big Hero 6 — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Wish Dragon (2021)
Keeps the romance register of Memoirs of a Geisha but asks for a colder reading of it.
Turning Red (2022)
Keeps the comedy register of Wish Dragon but asks for a colder reading of it.
Predator: Killer of Killers (2025)
Keeps the animation register of Turning Red but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Rob Marshall
Director
1 film together
Notably Memoirs of a Geisha
Steve Pink
Director
1 film together
Notably Accepted
Chris Williams
Director
1 film together
Notably Big Hero 6
Chris Appelhans
Director
1 film together
Notably Wish Dragon
Domee Shi
Director
1 film together
Notably Turning Red
Mike Mitchell
Director
1 film together
Notably Kung Fu Panda 4
Dan Trachtenberg
Director
1 film together
Notably Predator: Killer of Killers
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Chris Williams
Director
1 film together · 8.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Big Hero 6Dan Trachtenberg
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Predator: Killer of KillersChris Appelhans
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Wish DragonRob Marshall
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Memoirs of a GeishaDomee Shi
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Turning RedMike 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 4Steve Pink
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
AcceptedSix 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
Big Hero 6
as Additional Voice (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
Wish Dragon
as Additional Voices (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
Big Hero 6
as Additional Voice (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Memoirs of a Geisha
as Kimono Factory Worker
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Big Hero 6
as Additional Voice (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 Taku Leung 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
20 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.
Animation Legend
Awarded
6 catalogue titles in animation, 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 Photographed Father / Rail Worker #1 / Delivery Man (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Predator: Killer of Killers
as Additional Voices (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Wish Dragon
as Additional Voices (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Over the Moon
as Photographed Father / Rail Worker #1 / Delivery Man (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Big Hero 6
as Additional Voice (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Kung Fu Panda 4
as Transforming Wolf (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Wish Dragon
as Additional Voices (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Big Hero 6
as Additional Voice (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
Community
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Reference
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