Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#40124
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Richard Ng Yiu-Hon represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 38 years in, and Richard is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Richard Ng Yiu-Hon appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Richard. Miracles: The Canton Godfather is the clearest case: a film rated 7.1 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 crime, drama, thriller. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Raymond Wong Pak-Ming, Renny Harlin, Tsui Hark and others, Richard Ng Yiu-Hon 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.
Miracles: The Canton Godfather (1989) as Chief Inspector Ho · Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010) as Wang Lu (before face-lift) · Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Stars (1985) as Sandy
Career snapshot
Ranked #40124 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
1985–2023
Career length
38 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.1
Miracles: The Canton Godfather
Average Nutevio score
5.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.1
Miracles: The Canton Godfather
Most frequent director
Raymond Wong Pak-Ming
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Raymond Wong Pak-Ming
Most common genre
Comedy
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 48m
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
6.8 average MV
The 1980s are where the work and the material meet. Miracles: The Canton Godfather, Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Stars — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1980s
6.8
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1980s
6.8
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. Miracles: The Canton Godfather, Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Stars.
Most productive era
2010s
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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.11 film | — | 5.72 films | 5.61 film |
| Action | 6.82 films | 5.81 film | 5.73 films | — |
| Thriller | — | — | 4.71 film | 5.61 film |
| Comedy | 6.82 films | — | 5.13 films | 5.22 films |
| Crime | 7.11 film | — | 5.32 films | 5.61 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1985Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Stars
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Sandy.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1989Miracles: The Canton Godfather
7.1 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 Tsai Lin.
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.
10 of 10 films
as Chief Inspector Ho
Directed by Jackie Chan
as Wang Lu (before face-lift)
Directed by Tsui Hark
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
Chief Inspector Ho
Miracles: The Canton Godfather (1989)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Chief Inspector Ho gives Richard Ng Yiu-Hon a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Sandy
Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Stars (1985)
Performance score7.0
Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Stars asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Sandy is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Wang Lu (before face-lift)
Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010)
Performance score6.8
Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Wang Lu (before face-lift) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Tsai Lin
Where the Wind Blows (2023)
Performance score6.5
Where the Wind Blows asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Tsai Lin 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 Chief Inspector Ho
Start here. Miracles: The Canton Godfather is the clearest statement of what Richard Ng Yiu-Hon does — accessible, 126 minutes, and rated 7.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Richard 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.
Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Stars (1985)
Keeps the action register of Miracles: The Canton Godfather but asks for a colder reading of it.
Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010)
Keeps the action register of Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Stars but asks for a colder reading of it.
All's Well, End's Well 2020 (2020)
A deliberate change of key after Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Where the Wind Blows (2023)
A deliberate change of key after All's Well, End's Well 2020 — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Sammo Hung Kam-Bo
Director
1 film together
Notably Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Stars
Jackie Chan
Director
1 film together
Notably Miracles: The Canton Godfather
Jan de Bont
Director
1 film together
Notably Lara Croft: Tomb Raider - The Cradle of Life
Tsui Hark
Director
1 film together
Notably Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame
Renny Harlin
Director
1 film together
Notably Skiptrace
Raymond Wong Pak-Ming
Director
1 film together
Notably All's Well, End's Well 2020
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Jackie Chan
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Miracles: The Canton GodfatherTsui Hark
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom FlameSammo Hung Kam-Bo
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky StarsRenny Harlin
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SkiptraceJan de Bont
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider - The Cradle of LifeRaymond Wong Pak-Ming
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
All's Well, End's Well 2020Six 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
Miracles: The Canton Godfather
as Chief Inspector Ho
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame
as Wang Lu (before face-lift)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Miracles: The Canton Godfather
as Chief Inspector Ho
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider - The Cradle of Life
as Buyer
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Miracles: The Canton Godfather
as Chief Inspector Ho
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. Richard Ng Yiu-Hon 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
38 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
7 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
Miracles: The Canton Godfather
as Chief Inspector Ho
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Miracles: The Canton Godfather
as Chief Inspector Ho
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider - The Cradle of Life
as Buyer
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame
as Wang Lu (before face-lift)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Miracles: The Canton Godfather
as Chief Inspector Ho
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Skiptrace
as Chinese man on bus
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Miracles: The Canton Godfather
as Chief Inspector Ho
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame
as Wang Lu (before face-lift)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
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Reference
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