Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#5414
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Stephanie Hsu 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.
Stephanie Hsu appears in 12 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Stephanie. The Wild Robot is the clearest case: a film rated 8.4 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 comedy, fantasy, family. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Chris Sanders, David Leitch, David Wachtenheim and others, Stephanie Hsu 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.
The Wild Robot (2024) as Vontra (voice) · Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) as Joy Wang / Jobu Tupaki · Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021) as Soo
Career snapshot
Ranked #5414 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
12
2018–2026
Career length
8 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.4
The Wild Robot
Average Nutevio score
6.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.3
The Wild Robot
Most frequent director
Chris Sanders
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Chris Sanders
Most common genre
Comedy
9 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
6.2
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
6.9 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Set It Up — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.9
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.9
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. Set It Up.
Most productive era
2020s
11 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 | — | 6.72 films |
| Action | — | 7.43 films |
| Comedy | 6.91 film | 5.88 films |
| Crime | — | 5.61 film |
| Romance | 6.91 film | 6.52 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2018Set It Up
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Nervous Assistant Amber.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2024The Wild Robot
8.4 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
2026Steps
The current state of the argument, as Margot (voice).
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.
12 of 12 films
as Vontra (voice)
Directed by Chris Sanders
as Joy Wang / Jobu Tupaki
Directed by Daniel Kwan
as Soo
Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton
as Skyler's Mom (voice)
Directed by David Wachtenheim
as Alma Milan
Directed by David Leitch
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
Vontra (voice)
The Wild Robot (2024)
Performance score8.3
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Vontra (voice) gives Stephanie Hsu a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Joy Wang / Jobu Tupaki
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
Performance score8.1
Everything Everywhere All at Once asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Joy Wang / Jobu Tupaki is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Soo
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)
Performance score7.3
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Soo is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Skyler's Mom (voice)
Leo (2023)
Performance score7.2
Leo asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Skyler's Mom (voice) 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 Vontra (voice)
Start here. The Wild Robot is the clearest statement of what Stephanie Hsu does — accessible, 102 minutes, and rated 8.4 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Stephanie 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.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)
Keeps the adventure register of The Wild Robot but asks for a colder reading of it.
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
Keeps the action register of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings but asks for a colder reading of it.
Leo (2023)
A deliberate change of key after Everything Everywhere All at Once — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Fall Guy (2024)
Keeps the comedy register of Leo but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Claire Scanlon
Director
1 film together
Notably Set It Up
Destin Daniel Cretton
Director
1 film together
Notably Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
Daniel Kwan
Director
1 film together
Notably Everything Everywhere All at Once
Randall Park
Director
1 film together
Notably Shortcomings
Adele Lim
Director
1 film together
Notably Joy Ride
David Wachtenheim
Director
1 film together
Notably Leo
David Leitch
Director
1 film together
Notably The Fall Guy
Chris Sanders
Director
1 film together
Notably The Wild Robot
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Chris Sanders
Director
1 film together · 8.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Wild RobotDaniel Kwan
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Everything Everywhere All at OnceDestin Daniel Cretton
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten RingsDavid Wachtenheim
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
LeoDavid Leitch
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Fall GuyClaire Scanlon
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Set It UpAdele Lim
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Joy RideRandall Park
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
ShortcomingsSix 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
The Wild Robot
as Vontra (voice)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Shortcomings
as Mrs. Wong
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
The Wild Robot
as Vontra (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Dìdi (弟弟)
as Kissing Tutorial Instructor (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Wild Robot
as Vontra (voice)
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. Stephanie Hsu 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.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
9 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
The Wild Robot
as Vontra (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Everything Everywhere All at Once
as Joy Wang / Jobu Tupaki
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Shortcomings
as Mrs. Wong
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
as Soo
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Everything Everywhere All at Once
as Joy Wang / Jobu Tupaki
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Everything Everywhere All at Once
as Joy Wang / Jobu Tupaki
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Monkey King
as Mayor's Wife (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Wild Robot
as Vontra (voice)
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
Community
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Reference
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