Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#23772
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Law Kar-Ying represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 32 years in, and Law is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Law Kar-Ying appears in 13 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Law. A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella is the clearest case: a film rated 7.7 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 comedy, family, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Wong Jing, Raymond Wong Pak-Ming, Vincent Kok Tak-Chiu and others, Law Kar-Ying 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.
A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella (1995) as Longevity Monk · A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora's Box (1995) as Longevity Monk · The God of Cookery (1996) as MC at Cooking Competition
Career snapshot
Ranked #23772 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
13
1994–2026
Career length
32 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.7
A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella
Average Nutevio score
5.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.7
A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella
Most frequent director
Wong Jing
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Wong Jing
Most common genre
Comedy
11 titles
Average runtime
1h 41m
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
6.4
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
1990s
7.1 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Gorgeous, The God of Cookery, A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora's Box — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
7.1
Across 6 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
7.1
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. Gorgeous, The God of Cookery, A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora's Box.
Most productive era
1990s
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 | 1990s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.53 films | — | 7.01 film |
| Action | 7.15 films | — | 4.82 films |
| Comedy | 7.16 films | 0.01 film | 4.14 films |
| Romance | 7.23 films | — | 6.11 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Tat Man Sai.
Highest rated performance
1995A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella
7.7 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
1995A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora's Box
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
The current state of the argument.
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.
13 of 13 films
as Longevity Monk
Directed by Jeffrey Lau Chun-Wai
as Longevity Monk
Directed by Jeffrey Lau Chun-Wai
as School principal
Directed by Unknown
as MC at Cooking Competition
Directed by Lee Lik-Chi
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
Longevity Monk
A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora's Box (1995)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Longevity Monk gives Law Kar-Ying a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Longevity Monk
A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella (1995)
Performance score7.5
A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Longevity Monk is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
School principal
Pretty Heart (2022)
Performance score7.1
Pretty Heart asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. School principal is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
MC at Cooking Competition
The God of Cookery (1996)
Performance score7.1
The God of Cookery asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. MC at Cooking Competition 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 Longevity Monk
Start here. A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora's Box is the clearest statement of what Law Kar-Ying does — accessible, 88 minutes, and rated 7.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Law 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.
From Beijing with Love (1994)
Keeps the action register of A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora's Box but asks for a colder reading of it.
A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella (1995)
Keeps the action register of From Beijing with Love but asks for a colder reading of it.
The God of Cookery (1996)
Keeps the comedy register of A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella but asks for a colder reading of it.
Pretty Heart (2022)
Keeps the drama register of The God of Cookery but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Jeffrey Lau Chun-Wai
Director
2 films together
Notably A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella
Lee Lik-Chi
Director
2 films together
Notably The God of Cookery
Wong Jing
Director
2 films together
Notably God of Gamblers' Return
Vincent Kok Tak-Chiu
Director
1 film together
Notably Gorgeous
Raymond Wong Pak-Ming
Director
1 film together
Notably All's Well, End's Well 2020
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Jeffrey Lau Chun-Wai
Director
2 films together · 7.6 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: CinderellaLee Lik-Chi
Director
2 films together · 7.1 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The God of CookeryWong Jing
Director
2 films together · 5.2 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
God of Gamblers' ReturnVincent Kok Tak-Chiu
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
GorgeousRaymond Wong Pak-Ming
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
All's Well, End's Well 2020Six 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
A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella
as Longevity Monk
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella
as Longevity Monk
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella
as Longevity Monk
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Gorgeous
as Restaurant Manager
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora's Box
as Longevity Monk
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. Law Kar-Ying 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
32 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
11 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
A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella
as Longevity Monk
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella
as Longevity Monk
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora's Box
as Longevity Monk
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Great Detective
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella
as Longevity Monk
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Monkey King
as Sanzang
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora's Box
as Longevity Monk
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Dynasty Warriors
as Lu Boshe
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Reference
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