Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#21548
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Ming Lo 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.
Ming Lo appears in 7 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Ming. The Pursuit of Happyness 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 quiet performance, versatility, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for comedy, crime, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with David Dobkin, Gabriele Muccino, Sam Mendes and others, Ming Lo 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 Pursuit of Happyness (2006) as Young Executive · Million Dollar Baby (2004) as Rehab Doctor · Jarhead (2005) as Bored Gunny
Career snapshot
Ranked #21548 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
7
1998–2019
Career length
21 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.0
The Pursuit of Happyness
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.0
Million Dollar Baby
Most frequent director
David Dobkin
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With David Dobkin
Most common genre
Drama
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 49m
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
2000s
6.9 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. The Pursuit of Happyness, Jarhead, Million Dollar Baby — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.9
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.9
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. Doctor Dolittle.
Most productive era
2000s
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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.94 films | 6.01 film |
| Thriller | — | 5.11 film | — |
| Comedy | 6.01 film | — | 6.12 films |
| Crime | — | — | 6.01 film |
| Horror | — | 5.11 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1998Doctor Dolittle
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Cop #2.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
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.
Most recent film
2019The Laundromat
The current state of the argument, as Chief Wang Lijun.
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.
7 of 7 films
as Bored Gunny
Directed by Sam Mendes
as Chief Wang Lijun
Directed by Unknown
as Ken Kinkabe
Directed by David Dobkin
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
Young Executive
The Pursuit of Happyness (2006)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Young Executive gives Ming Lo a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Rehab Doctor
Million Dollar Baby (2004)
Performance score7.8
Million Dollar Baby asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Rehab Doctor is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Bored Gunny
Jarhead (2005)
Performance score6.6
Jarhead asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Bored Gunny is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Chief Wang Lijun
The Laundromat (2019)
Performance score6.5
The Laundromat asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Chief Wang Lijun 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 Young Executive
Start here. The Pursuit of Happyness is the clearest statement of what Ming Lo does — accessible, 117 minutes, and rated 8.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Ming 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.
Million Dollar Baby (2004)
Keeps the drama register of The Pursuit of Happyness but asks for a colder reading of it.
Jarhead (2005)
Keeps the drama register of Million Dollar Baby but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Change-Up (2011)
A deliberate change of key after Jarhead — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Laundromat (2019)
Keeps the comedy register of The Change-Up but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Betty Thomas
Director
1 film together
Notably Doctor Dolittle
Janusz Kamiński
Director
1 film together
Notably Lost Souls
Clint Eastwood
Director
1 film together
Notably Million Dollar Baby
Sam Mendes
Director
1 film together
Notably Jarhead
Gabriele Muccino
Director
1 film together
Notably The Pursuit of Happyness
David Dobkin
Director
1 film together
Notably The Change-Up
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Gabriele Muccino
Director
1 film together · 8.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Pursuit of HappynessClint Eastwood
Director
1 film together · 8.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Million Dollar BabySam Mendes
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
JarheadDavid Dobkin
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Change-UpBetty Thomas
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Doctor DolittleJanusz Kamiński
Director
1 film together · 5.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Lost SoulsSix 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
Million Dollar Baby
as Rehab Doctor
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Million Dollar Baby
as Rehab Doctor
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Million Dollar Baby
as Rehab Doctor
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Doctor Dolittle
as Cop #2
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Pursuit of Happyness
as Young Executive
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. Ming Lo 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
21 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
5 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
Million Dollar Baby
as Rehab Doctor
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Million Dollar Baby
as Rehab Doctor
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Million Dollar Baby
as Rehab Doctor
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Doctor Dolittle
as Cop #2
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Million Dollar Baby
as Rehab Doctor
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Million Dollar Baby
as Rehab Doctor
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Laundromat
as Chief Wang Lijun
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Doctor Dolittle
as Cop #2
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Michael Caine
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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