Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#34192
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Sam Puefua is the performer our scores keep defending against the popular vote — a career of films that get better the further you stand from their release week.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Sam Puefua appears in 2 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Sam. Moana is the clearest case: a film rated 7.9 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are transformation, action, screen presence. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for adventure, family, fantasy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Thomas Kail, Sam Puefua 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.
Moana (2026) as Village Fisherman · Lazarus (2021) as Rico
Career snapshot
Ranked #34192 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
2
2021–2026
Career length
5 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.9
Moana
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.1
Moana
Most frequent director
Thomas Kail
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Thomas Kail
Most common genre
Adventure
1 title
Average runtime
1h 57m
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
6.3
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
2020s
6.6 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Moana, Lazarus — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
6.6
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
6.2
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2020s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Moana, Lazarus.
Most productive era
2020s
2 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 | 2020s |
|---|---|
| Action | 5.31 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2021Lazarus
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Rico.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2026Moana
7.9 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 Village Fisherman.
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.
2 of 2 films
as Village Fisherman
Directed by Thomas Kail
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Showing 2 of 2 titles · 2 total credits · active 2021–2026
The defining work
#1
Village Fisherman
Moana (2026)
Performance score7.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Village Fisherman gives Sam Puefua a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Rico
Lazarus (2021)
Performance score6.5
Lazarus asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Rico 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 Village Fisherman
Start here. Moana is the clearest statement of what Sam Puefua does — accessible, 128 minutes, and rated 7.9 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Sam 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.
Lazarus (2021)
A deliberate change of key after Moana — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Thomas Kail
Director
1 film together
Notably Moana
Catherine Lagaʻaia
Actor
1 film together
Notably Moana
Dwayne Johnson
Actor
1 film together
Notably Moana
Rena Owen
Actor
1 film together
Notably Moana
John Tui
Actor
1 film together
Notably Moana
Frankie Adams
Actor
1 film together
Notably Moana
Jemaine Clement
Actor
1 film together
Notably Moana
Emma Puahi-Shapazian
Actor
1 film together
Notably Moana
Amaya Masoli
Actor
1 film together
Notably Moana
Sione Milford
Actor
1 film together
Notably Moana
Kapeneta Te'o-Tafiti
Actor
1 film together
Notably Moana
Eric Scanlan
Actor
1 film together
Notably Moana
Moses Goods
Actor
1 film together
Notably Moana
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Thomas Kail
Director
1 film together · 7.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
MoanaSix 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
Moana
as Village Fisherman
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Moana
as Village Fisherman
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Moana
as Village Fisherman
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Moana
as Village Fisherman
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Moana
as Village Fisherman
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. Sam Puefua has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
| Nutevio Performer Score | 7.1 | 7.2 |
|---|---|---|
| Career ranking | #678 of 681 | #669 of 681 |
| Awards on file | Unknown | Unknown |
| Oscar wins | Unknown | Unknown |
| Oscar nominations | Unknown | Unknown |
| Average Nutevio score | 7.9 | 7.9 |
| Genres | Adventure, Family, Fantasy | Adventure, Family, Fantasy |
| Directors | Thomas Kail | Thomas Kail |
| Performance DNA | Emotional range, Screen presence, Rewatchability | Emotional range, Screen presence, Charisma |
| Career timeline | 2026–2026 | 2026–2026 |
| Most iconic role | Village Fisherman — Moana | Moana — Moana |
| Most rewatchable film | Moana | Moana |
| Filmography | 1 catalogue film | 1 catalogue film |
Films together
Moana
Shared directors
thomas-kail
Shared collections
Fantasy Movies, Adventure Movies
Collaborators in common
Thomas Kail · Dwayne Johnson · Rena Owen · John Tui · Frankie Adams · Jemaine Clement · Emma Puahi-Shapazian · Amaya Masoli
Our editors cannot separate them on the catalogue as it stands. Sam Puefua and Catherine Lagaʻaia score within a rounding error of each other.
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.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
Moana
as Village Fisherman
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Moana
as Village Fisherman
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Moana
as Village Fisherman
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Lazarus
as Rico
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Moana
as Village Fisherman
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Lazarus
as Rico
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Moana
as Village Fisherman
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Moana
as Village Fisherman
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
Across the library
Every Nutevio collection this name turns up in, and how high they rank there.
Collection footprint
Appears in 2 Nutevio collections
Keep reading
From the magazine
If you like this performer
Catherine Lagaʻaia
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Dwayne Johnson
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Rena Owen
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
John Tui
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Frankie Adams
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Jemaine Clement
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Have your say
Community
Which Sam Puefua performance holds up best?
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Reference
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