Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#33291
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Kelvin Han Yee represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 30 years in, and Kelvin is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Kelvin Han Yee appears in 8 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Kelvin. Sweet November is the clearest case: a film rated 6.9 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, quiet performance, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for comedy, drama, action. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Todd Haynes, Karyn Kusama, Curtis Hanson and others, Kelvin Han Yee 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.
Sweet November (2001) as Burly Man · The Island (2005) as Censor · May December (2023) as Joe Sr.
Career snapshot
Ranked #33291 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
8
1995–2025
Career length
30 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.9
Sweet November
Average Nutevio score
5.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
6.9
Sweet November
Most frequent director
Todd Haynes
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Todd Haynes
Most common genre
Drama
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 50m
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
6.3
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
6.5 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. True Crime, Copycat — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
6.5
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
6.5
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. True Crime, Copycat.
Most productive era
2000s
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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.51 film | 6.32 films | 5.91 film | 3.32 films |
| Action | — | 6.71 film | 5.91 film | — |
| Thriller | 6.52 films | 6.71 film | 5.91 film | — |
| Comedy | — | — | — | 0.01 film |
| Crime | 6.52 films | — | 5.91 film | — |
| Romance | — | 6.32 films | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1995Copycat
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Chinese Detective.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2001Sweet November
6.9 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
2025Mushroom Dad
The current state of the argument, as Paul.
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.
8 of 8 films
as Burly Man
Directed by Unknown
as Censor
Directed by Michael Bay
as Lt. Oshima
Directed by Karyn Kusama
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
Burly Man
Sweet November (2001)
Performance score6.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Burly Man gives Kelvin Han Yee a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Joe Sr.
May December (2023)
Performance score6.6
May December asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Joe Sr. is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Censor
The Island (2005)
Performance score6.6
The Island asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Censor is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Paul
Mushroom Dad (2025)
Performance score6.5
Mushroom Dad asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Paul 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 Burly Man
Start here. Sweet November is the clearest statement of what Kelvin Han Yee does — accessible, 119 minutes, and rated 6.9 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Kelvin 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 Island (2005)
A deliberate change of key after Sweet November — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Destroyer (2018)
Keeps the action register of The Island but asks for a colder reading of it.
May December (2023)
Keeps the drama register of Destroyer but asks for a colder reading of it.
Mushroom Dad (2025)
Keeps the drama register of May December but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Jon Amiel
Director
1 film together
Notably Copycat
Clint Eastwood
Director
1 film together
Notably True Crime
Michael Bay
Director
1 film together
Notably The Island
Curtis Hanson
Director
1 film together
Notably Lucky You
Karyn Kusama
Director
1 film together
Notably Destroyer
Todd Haynes
Director
1 film together
Notably May December
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Michael Bay
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The IslandTodd Haynes
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
May DecemberClint Eastwood
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
True CrimeJon Amiel
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
CopycatKaryn Kusama
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
DestroyerCurtis Hanson
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Lucky YouSix 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
Sweet November
as Burly Man
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Sweet November
as Burly Man
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Sweet November
as Burly Man
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Island
as Censor
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Sweet November
as Burly Man
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. Kelvin Han Yee 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
30 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
6 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
Copycat
as Chinese Detective
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
True Crime
as Zachary Platt
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Lucky You
as Chico Banh
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Copycat
as Chinese Detective
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Island
as Censor
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Island
as Censor
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Sweet November
as Burly Man
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Sweet November
as Burly Man
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Christian Bale
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Zach Grenier
Built a career in the same territory: crime and mystery
Richmond Arquette
Built a career in the same territory: crime and mystery
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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