Performer
A reliably excellent presence whose best work outranks their reputation.
Nutevio rank
#34195
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Mayumi Saco has never appeared in a film our editors rate as ordinary, which is either extraordinary judgement or extraordinary luck. We have stopped believing in the luck.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Mayumi Saco appears in 1 film in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Mayumi. Spirited Away is the clearest case: a film rated 8.8 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are emotional range, quiet performance, rewatchability. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for fantasy, family, animation. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Hayao Miyazaki, Mayumi Saco 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.
Spirited Away (2001) as (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #34195 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
1
2001–2001
Career length
1 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.8
Spirited Away
Average Nutevio score
8.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.5
Spirited Away
Most frequent director
Hayao Miyazaki
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Hayao Miyazaki
Most common genre
Fantasy
1 title
Average runtime
2h 5m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
8.0
out of 10
A reliably excellent presence whose best work outranks their reputation.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
7.3
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.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
2000s
8.8 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Spirited Away — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
8.8
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
8.5
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. Spirited Away.
Most productive era
2000s
1 film
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2001Spirited Away
Where our catalogue meets this career, as (voice). 8.8 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 (voice).
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.
1 of 1 films
as (voice)
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
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
(voice)
Spirited Away (2001)
Performance score8.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. (voice) gives Mayumi Saco a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as (voice)
Start here. Spirited Away is the clearest statement of what Mayumi Saco does — accessible, 125 minutes, and rated 8.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Mayumi 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.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Hayao Miyazaki
Director
1 film together · 8.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Spirited AwaySix 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
Spirited Away
as (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
Spirited Away
as (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
Spirited Away
as (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Spirited Away
as (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Spirited Away
as (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. Mayumi Saco 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.
Editor's Icon
Awarded
Named by our desk for a body of work we return to when we need to explain what screen acting is for.
Most Influential Career
Awarded
Recognised for changing what casting directors thought a leading performance could look like.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
Spirited Away
as (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Spirited Away
as (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Spirited Away
as (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Spirited Away
as (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Spirited Away
as (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Spirited Away
as (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Spirited Away
as (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Spirited Away
as (voice)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Rumi Hiiragi
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Miyu Irino
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Mari Natsuki
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Takashi Naito
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Yasuko Sawaguchi
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Tatsuya Gashuin
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Have your say
Community
Which Mayumi Saco performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
Join the conversation
Reference
Continue exploring
Trending performers
Directors they work with
Collections to read next
