Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#32360
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Michael Yama represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 32 years in, and Michael is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Michael Yama appears in 5 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Michael. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is the clearest case: a film rated 7.5 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, transformation, versatility. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for mystery, comedy, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Joel Coen, Brett Haley, Bobby Farrelly and others, Michael Yama 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.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) as Chinese Co-Pilot · Click (2006) as Watsuhita Head Executive · I'll See You in My Dreams (2015) as Speed Dater 4
Career snapshot
Ranked #32360 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
5
1984–2016
Career length
32 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.5
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Average Nutevio score
6.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Most frequent director
Joel Coen
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Joel Coen
Most common genre
Comedy
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 47m
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
6.5
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
1980s
7.5 average MV
The 1980s are where the work and the material meet. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1980s
7.5
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1980s
7.3
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1980s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
Most productive era
2010s
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 | 1980s | 2000s | 2010s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.51 film | 6.31 film |
| Action | 7.51 film | — | — |
| Comedy | — | 6.51 film | 5.93 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
1984Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Chinese Co-Pilot. 7.5 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
2016Hail, Caesar!
The current state of the argument, as Chinese Restaurant Maître D'.
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.
5 of 5 films
as Chinese Co-Pilot
Directed by Steven Spielberg
as Chinese Restaurant Maître D'
Directed by Joel Coen
as Watsuhita Head Executive
Directed by Frank Coraci
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
Chinese Co-Pilot
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
Performance score7.3
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Chinese Co-Pilot gives Michael Yama a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Chinese Restaurant Maître D'
Hail, Caesar! (2016)
Performance score6.5
Hail, Caesar! asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Chinese Restaurant Maître D' is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Speed Dater 4
I'll See You in My Dreams (2015)
Performance score6.5
I'll See You in My Dreams asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Speed Dater 4 is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Harry's Dad
Dumb and Dumber To (2014)
Performance score6.5
Dumb and Dumber To asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Harry's Dad 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 Chinese Co-Pilot
Start here. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is the clearest statement of what Michael Yama does — accessible, 118 minutes, and rated 7.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Michael 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.
Click (2006)
A deliberate change of key after Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Dumb and Dumber To (2014)
Keeps the comedy register of Click but asks for a colder reading of it.
I'll See You in My Dreams (2015)
Keeps the comedy register of Dumb and Dumber To but asks for a colder reading of it.
Hail, Caesar! (2016)
Keeps the comedy register of I'll See You in My Dreams but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Steven Spielberg
Director
1 film together
Notably Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Frank Coraci
Director
1 film together
Notably Click
Bobby Farrelly
Director
1 film together
Notably Dumb and Dumber To
Brett Haley
Director
1 film together
Notably I'll See You in My Dreams
Joel Coen
Director
1 film together
Notably Hail, Caesar!
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Steven Spielberg
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Indiana Jones and the Temple of DoomFrank Coraci
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
ClickBrett Haley
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
I'll See You in My DreamsJoel Coen
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hail, Caesar!Bobby Farrelly
Director
1 film together · 5.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Dumb and Dumber ToSix 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
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
as Chinese Co-Pilot
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Click
as Watsuhita Head Executive
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
as Chinese Co-Pilot
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Dumb and Dumber To
as Harry's Dad
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
as Chinese Co-Pilot
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. Michael Yama 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
4 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
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
as Chinese Co-Pilot
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
as Chinese Co-Pilot
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Click
as Watsuhita Head Executive
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Hail, Caesar!
as Chinese Restaurant Maître D'
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
as Chinese Co-Pilot
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
as Chinese Co-Pilot
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Click
as Watsuhita Head Executive
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Click
as Watsuhita Head Executive
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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