Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#21007
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Ric Young works on drama 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.
Ric Young appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Ric. American Gangster is the clearest case: a film rated 7.6 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are drama, versatility, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for crime, drama, action. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Ridley Scott, Louis Leterrier, James Foley and others, Ric Young 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.
American Gangster (2007) as Chinese General · Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) as Kao Kan · The Last Emperor (1987) as Interrogator
Career snapshot
Ranked #21007 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
1984–2007
Career length
23 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.6
American Gangster
Average Nutevio score
7.0
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.6
American Gangster
Most frequent director
Ridley Scott
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Ridley Scott
Most common genre
Drama
6 titles
Average runtime
2h 12m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.9
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
6.7
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. The Last Emperor, 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 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1980s
7.4
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. The Last Emperor, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
Most productive era
1990s
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 | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.41 film | 6.74 films | 7.61 film |
| Action | 7.51 film | 6.52 films | 6.82 films |
| Thriller | — | 6.21 film | 6.82 films |
| Crime | — | 6.21 film | 7.13 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1984Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Kao Kan.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
7.6 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 Chinese General.
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
as Interrogator
Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci
as Mister Big
Directed by Unknown
as Mr Kwai
Directed by Louis Leterrier
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 General
American Gangster (2007)
Performance score7.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Chinese General gives Ric Young a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Kao Kan
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
Performance score7.3
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Kao Kan is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Interrogator
The Last Emperor (1987)
Performance score7.2
The Last Emperor asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Interrogator is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Mister Big
Kiss of the Dragon (2001)
Performance score7.1
Kiss of the Dragon asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mister Big 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 General
Start here. American Gangster is the clearest statement of what Ric Young does — accessible, 157 minutes, and rated 7.6 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Ric 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.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
A deliberate change of key after American Gangster — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Last Emperor (1987)
A deliberate change of key after Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Kiss of the Dragon (2001)
A deliberate change of key after The Last Emperor — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Transporter (2002)
Keeps the action register of Kiss of the Dragon 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
Bernardo Bertolucci
Director
1 film together
Notably The Last Emperor
Rob Cohen
Director
1 film together
Notably Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story
Oliver Stone
Director
1 film together
Notably Nixon
Jean-Jacques Annaud
Director
1 film together
Notably Seven Years in Tibet
James Foley
Director
1 film together
Notably The Corruptor
Louis Leterrier
Director
1 film together
Notably The Transporter
Ridley Scott
Director
1 film together
Notably American Gangster
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Ridley Scott
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
American GangsterSteven 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 DoomBernardo Bertolucci
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Last EmperorJean-Jacques Annaud
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Seven Years in TibetLouis Leterrier
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The TransporterRob Cohen
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Dragon: The Bruce Lee StoryOliver Stone
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
NixonJames Foley
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 CorruptorSix 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 Kao Kan
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Seven Years in Tibet
as General Chang Jing Wu
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 Kao Kan
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Nixon
as Mao Tse-Tung
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
American Gangster
as Chinese General
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. Ric Young 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
23 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
6 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
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
as Kao Kan
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Kiss of the Dragon
as Mister Big
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Seven Years in Tibet
as General Chang Jing Wu
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Kiss of the Dragon
as Mister Big
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 Kao Kan
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
as Kao Kan
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Seven Years in Tibet
as General Chang Jing Wu
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
as Kao Kan
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Harry Dean Stanton
Works with the same directors — Ridley Scott
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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