Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#106364
of 909177 performers
Top 25%
Mao Fan 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.
Mao Fan appears in 12 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Mao. The Sin Trade 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, horror, fantasy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with , Mao Fan 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.
The Sin Trade (2026) as Cheng Ze · Striking Rescue (2024) as Clay · The Paper Man Returns (2023) as Qiao An
Career snapshot
Ranked #106364 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
12
2019–2026
Career length
7 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.0
The Sin Trade
Average Nutevio score
3.3
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.0
The Sin Trade
Most frequent director
—
Longest collaboration
—
Most common genre
Action
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 5m
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
4.0 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Snake 5: Monster City, The Sin Trade, Return to the Jurassic — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
4.0
Across 10 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
4.0
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2010s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Royal Guards: The Death Town, Song Ci's Cleansing of Injustice.
Most productive era
2020s
10 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 | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.52 films |
| Action | — | 4.07 films |
| Thriller | — | 4.94 films |
| Crime | — | 7.82 films |
| Horror | — | 4.13 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2019Royal Guards: The Death Town
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Yang Yi.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2026The Sin Trade
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. The current state of the argument, as Cheng Ze.
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.
12 of 12 films
as Cheng Ze
Directed by Unknown
as Clay
Directed by Unknown
as Scarface
Directed by Unknown
as Chen Zheng Ren
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.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Cheng Ze
The Sin Trade (2026)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Cheng Ze gives Mao Fan a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Clay
Striking Rescue (2024)
Performance score7.3
Striking Rescue asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Clay is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Scarface
Snake 5: Monster City (2026)
Performance score6.5
Snake 5: Monster City asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Scarface is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Chen Zheng Ren
Return to the Jurassic (2025)
Performance score6.5
Return to the Jurassic asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Chen Zheng Ren 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 Cheng Ze
Start here. The Sin Trade is the clearest statement of what Mao Fan does — accessible, 98 minutes, and rated 8.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Mao 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.
Striking Rescue (2024)
Same director as The Sin Trade, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Return to the Jurassic (2025)
Same director as Striking Rescue, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Bound By a Promise (2025)
Same director as Return to the Jurassic, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Snake 5: Monster City (2026)
Same director as Bound By a Promise, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Not enough analysed work in the catalogue yet. This section fills in automatically as titles are imported.
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Six 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
The Sin Trade
as Cheng Ze
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Golden Spider City
as Professor Chen
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
The Sin Trade
as Cheng Ze
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Sin Trade
as Cheng Ze
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Sin Trade
as Cheng Ze
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. Mao Fan 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.
Action Legend
Awarded
7 catalogue titles in action, 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
The Sin Trade
as Cheng Ze
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Sin Trade
as Cheng Ze
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Golden Spider City
as Professor Chen
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Paper Man Returns
as Qiao An
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Sin Trade
as Cheng Ze
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Snake 5: Monster City
as Scarface
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Striking Rescue
as Clay
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Snake 5: Monster City
as Scarface
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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