Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#84775
of 909177 performers
Top 10%
Rexen Cheng 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.
Rexen Cheng appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Rexen. GATAO: Like Father Like Son is the clearest case: a film rated 7.4 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, quiet performance, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, fantasy, action. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Yao Hung-i, Chan Chun-hao, Chiang Jui-chih and others, Rexen Cheng 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.
GATAO: Like Father Like Son (2024) as Ching · The Silence Of Om (2018) as Om-Ga · GATAO: Big Brothers (2025) as Ching
Career snapshot
Ranked #84775 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
2018–2026
Career length
8 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.4
GATAO: Like Father Like Son
Average Nutevio score
5.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.4
GATAO: Like Father Like Son
Most frequent director
Yao Hung-i
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Yao Hung-i
Most common genre
Crime
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 37m
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
2010s
6.3 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Nina Wu, The Silence Of Om, Gatao 2: Rise of the King — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.3
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.3
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. Nina Wu, The Silence Of Om, Gatao 2: Rise of the King.
Most productive era
2020s
6 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 | 6.33 films | 5.41 film |
| Action | 5.81 film | 6.33 films |
| Thriller | 6.31 film | — |
| Crime | 5.81 film | 6.04 films |
| Romance | — | 2.72 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Career peak
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Om-Ga. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
2024GATAO: Like Father Like Son
7.4 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
The current state of the argument, as Ke You Jie.
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.
9 of 9 films
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
Ching
GATAO: Like Father Like Son (2024)
Performance score7.5
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Ching gives Rexen Cheng a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Om-Ga
The Silence Of Om (2018)
Performance score7.5
The Silence Of Om asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Om-Ga is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Ke You Jie
Kiss Me My Ghost Friend (2026)
Performance score6.5
Kiss Me My Ghost Friend asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Ke You Jie is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Ching
GATAO: Big Brothers (2025)
Performance score6.5
GATAO: Big Brothers asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Ching 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 Ching
Start here. GATAO: Like Father Like Son is the clearest statement of what Rexen Cheng does — accessible, 131 minutes, and rated 7.4 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Rexen 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.
The Silence Of Om (2018)
A deliberate change of key after GATAO: Like Father Like Son — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
You Have To Kill Me (2021)
A deliberate change of key after The Silence Of Om — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
GATAO: Big Brothers (2025)
Keeps the crime register of You Have To Kill Me but asks for a colder reading of it.
Kiss Me My Ghost Friend (2026)
A deliberate change of key after GATAO: Big Brothers — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Yao Hung-i
Director
2 films together
Notably GATAO: Like Father Like Son
Yen Cheng-kuo
Director
1 film together
Notably Gatao 2: Rise of the King
Chiang Jui-chih
Director
1 film together
Notably Gatao: The Last Stray
Chan Chun-hao
Director
1 film together
Notably You Have To Kill Me
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Yao Hung-i
Director
2 films together · 6.8 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
GATAO: Like Father Like SonYen Cheng-kuo
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Gatao 2: Rise of the KingChiang Jui-chih
Director
1 film together · 5.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Gatao: The Last StrayChan Chun-hao
Director
1 film together · 5.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
You Have To Kill MeSix 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
GATAO: Like Father Like Son
as Ching
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Be Alive Just Like You
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
GATAO: Like Father Like Son
as Ching
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
GATAO: Big Brothers
as Ching
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
GATAO: Like Father Like Son
as Ching
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. Rexen Cheng 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.
Crime Legend
Awarded
5 catalogue titles in crime, 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
GATAO: Like Father Like Son
as Ching
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
GATAO: Like Father Like Son
as Ching
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Be Alive Just Like You
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
You Have To Kill Me
as Shing Chou
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
GATAO: Like Father Like Son
as Ching
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Gatao 2: Rise of the King
as Qing
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Gatao 2: Rise of the King
as Qing
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
GATAO: Big Brothers
as Ching
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: drama and fantasy
Christian Bale
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Zach Grenier
Built a career in the same territory: crime and mystery
Have your say
Community
Which Rexen Cheng 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
