Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#15887
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Patti Yasutake represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 34 years in, and Patti is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Patti Yasutake appears in 6 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Patti. Star Trek: First Contact is the clearest case: a film rated 7.3 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 science fiction, comedy, documentary. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Thomas C. Grane, Michael Patrick Jann, Jonathan Frakes and others, Patti Yasutake 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.
Star Trek: First Contact (1996) as Nurse Ogawa · X-Men: The Mutant Watch (2000) as Sen. Connie Kasamatsu · Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999) as Mrs. Howard
Career snapshot
Ranked #15887 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
6
1986–2020
Career length
34 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.3
Star Trek: First Contact
Average Nutevio score
6.0
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
Star Trek: First Contact
Most frequent director
Thomas C. Grane
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Thomas C. Grane
Most common genre
Comedy
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 29m
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
6.8 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. X-Men: The Mutant Watch — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.8
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
7.0
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. Gung Ho.
Most productive era
1990s
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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.11 film | — | — | — |
| Action | — | 6.32 films | — | — |
| Thriller | — | 7.31 film | — | — |
| Comedy | 6.11 film | 6.02 films | — | 4.11 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1986Gung Ho
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Umeki Kazihiro.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
7.3 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
The current state of the argument, as Dr. Beverly Krasher.
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.
6 of 6 films
as Nurse Ogawa
Directed by Jonathan Frakes
as Sen. Connie Kasamatsu
Directed by Thomas C. Grane
as Dr. Beverly Krasher
Directed by Unknown
as TV Newscaster
Directed by Roger Spottiswoode
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
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The defining work
#1
Nurse Ogawa
Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Nurse Ogawa gives Patti Yasutake a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Sen. Connie Kasamatsu
X-Men: The Mutant Watch (2000)
Performance score6.7
X-Men: The Mutant Watch asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Sen. Connie Kasamatsu is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Dr. Beverly Krasher
Unbelievable!!!!! (2020)
Performance score6.5
Unbelievable!!!!! asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Dr. Beverly Krasher is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Mrs. Howard
Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999)
Performance score6.5
Drop Dead Gorgeous asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mrs. Howard 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 Nurse Ogawa
Start here. Star Trek: First Contact is the clearest statement of what Patti Yasutake does — accessible, 111 minutes, and rated 7.3 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Patti 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.
Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (1992)
Keeps the action register of Star Trek: First Contact but asks for a colder reading of it.
Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999)
Keeps the comedy register of Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot but asks for a colder reading of it.
X-Men: The Mutant Watch (2000)
A deliberate change of key after Drop Dead Gorgeous — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Unbelievable!!!!! (2020)
A deliberate change of key after X-Men: The Mutant Watch — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Ron Howard
Director
1 film together
Notably Gung Ho
Roger Spottiswoode
Director
1 film together
Notably Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot
Jonathan Frakes
Director
1 film together
Notably Star Trek: First Contact
Michael Patrick Jann
Director
1 film together
Notably Drop Dead Gorgeous
Thomas C. Grane
Director
1 film together
Notably X-Men: The Mutant Watch
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Jonathan Frakes
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Star Trek: First ContactThomas C. Grane
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
X-Men: The Mutant WatchMichael Patrick Jann
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Drop Dead GorgeousRon Howard
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Gung HoRoger Spottiswoode
Director
1 film together · 5.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Stop! Or My Mom Will ShootSix 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
Star Trek: First Contact
as Nurse Ogawa
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Gung Ho
as Umeki Kazihiro
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Star Trek: First Contact
as Nurse Ogawa
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Unbelievable!!!!!
as Dr. Beverly Krasher
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Star Trek: First Contact
as Nurse Ogawa
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. Patti Yasutake 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
34 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
Star Trek: First Contact
as Nurse Ogawa
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Star Trek: First Contact
as Nurse Ogawa
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Gung Ho
as Umeki Kazihiro
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Star Trek: First Contact
as Nurse Ogawa
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Star Trek: First Contact
as Nurse Ogawa
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Star Trek: First Contact
as Nurse Ogawa
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Gung Ho
as Umeki Kazihiro
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot
as TV Newscaster
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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Edward Norton
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Elliot Page
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Have your say
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Reference
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