Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#80746
of 909177 performers
Top 10%
Maho Yamada works on quiet performance 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.
Maho Yamada appears in 4 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Maho. Cloud is the clearest case: a film rated 6.7 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, transformation, intensity. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for drama, action, horror. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Hirokazu Kore-eda, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Michihito Fujii and others, Maho Yamada 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.
Cloud (2024) as Chizuru Tonoyama · Hard Days (2023) as Yukiko Uematsu · Your Turn to Kill: The Movie (2021) as Akane Kinoshita
Career snapshot
Ranked #80746 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
4
2021–2026
Career length
5 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.7
Cloud
Average Nutevio score
4.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
6.7
Cloud
Most frequent director
Hirokazu Kore-eda
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Hirokazu Kore-eda
Most common genre
Drama
3 titles
Average runtime
1h 36m
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
6.1
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
4.7 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Look Back, Cloud, Hard Days — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
4.7
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
4.7
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2020s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Look Back, Cloud, Hard Days.
Most productive era
2020s
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 | 2020s |
|---|---|
| Drama | 4.43 films |
| Action | 6.72 films |
| Thriller | 6.23 films |
| Crime | 6.72 films |
| Horror | 6.71 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2021Your Turn to Kill: The Movie
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Akane Kinoshita.
Career peak
2023Hard Days
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
2024Cloud
6.7 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
2026Look Back
The current state of the argument, as Manabe.
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.
4 of 4 films
as Chizuru Tonoyama
Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa
as Yukiko Uematsu
Directed by Michihito Fujii
as Akane Kinoshita
Directed by Noriyoshi Sakuma
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
Chizuru Tonoyama
Cloud (2024)
Performance score6.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Chizuru Tonoyama gives Maho Yamada a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Yukiko Uematsu
Hard Days (2023)
Performance score6.6
Hard Days asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Yukiko Uematsu is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Manabe
Look Back (2026)
Performance score6.5
Look Back asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Manabe is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Akane Kinoshita
Your Turn to Kill: The Movie (2021)
Performance score6.5
Your Turn to Kill: The Movie asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Akane Kinoshita 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 Chizuru Tonoyama
Start here. Cloud is the clearest statement of what Maho Yamada does — accessible, 124 minutes, and rated 6.7 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Maho 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.
Your Turn to Kill: The Movie (2021)
Keeps the thriller register of Cloud but asks for a colder reading of it.
Hard Days (2023)
Keeps the thriller register of Your Turn to Kill: The Movie but asks for a colder reading of it.
Look Back (2026)
Keeps the drama register of Hard Days but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Noriyoshi Sakuma
Director
1 film together
Notably Your Turn to Kill: The Movie
Michihito Fujii
Director
1 film together
Notably Hard Days
Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Director
1 film together
Notably Cloud
Hirokazu Kore-eda
Director
1 film together
Notably Look Back
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
CloudMichihito Fujii
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hard DaysNoriyoshi Sakuma
Director
1 film together · 5.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Your Turn to Kill: The MovieHirokazu Kore-eda
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Look BackSix 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
Cloud
as Chizuru Tonoyama
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Cloud
as Chizuru Tonoyama
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Cloud
as Chizuru Tonoyama
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Hard Days
as Yukiko Uematsu
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Cloud
as Chizuru Tonoyama
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. Maho Yamada 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.
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
3 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
Cloud
as Chizuru Tonoyama
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Cloud
as Chizuru Tonoyama
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Look Back
as Manabe
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Your Turn to Kill: The Movie
as Akane Kinoshita
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Cloud
as Chizuru Tonoyama
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Cloud
as Chizuru Tonoyama
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Hard Days
as Yukiko Uematsu
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Look Back
as Manabe
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Zach Grenier
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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