Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#1035
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Tadanobu Asano 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.
Tadanobu Asano appears in 20 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Tadanobu. Mortal Kombat II 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 versatility, transformation, drama. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, drama, action. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Yukiko Sode, Simon McQuoid, Pen-Ek Ratanaruang and others, Tadanobu Asano 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.
Mortal Kombat II (2026) as Lord Raiden · Thor: Ragnarok (2017) as Hogun · Redline (2009) as Frisbee (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #1035 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
20
2009–2027
Career length
18 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.9
Mortal Kombat II
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.9
Mortal Kombat II
Most frequent director
Simon McQuoid
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Simon McQuoid
Most common genre
Action
11 titles
Average runtime
2h 4m
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
6.4
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
2000s
7.5 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Redline — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
7.5
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
7.5
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2000s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Redline.
Most productive era
2020s
10 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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.75 films | 5.04 films |
| Action | 7.51 film | 6.75 films | 6.85 films |
| Thriller | — | 5.91 film | 6.53 films |
| Comedy | — | 7.81 film | 6.63 films |
| Crime | — | 6.21 film | — |
| Romance | — | 6.81 film | 0.01 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Career peak
2009Redline
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Frisbee (voice). Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
2026Mortal Kombat II
7.9 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
2027All the Lovers in the Night
The current state of the argument, as Mitsutsuka.
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.
20 of 20 films
as Lord Raiden
Directed by Simon McQuoid
as Hogun
Directed by Taika Waititi
as Interpreter
Directed by Martin Scorsese
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
Frisbee (voice)
Redline (2009)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Frisbee (voice) gives Tadanobu Asano a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Lord Raiden
Mortal Kombat II (2026)
Performance score7.7
Mortal Kombat II asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Lord Raiden is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Hogun
Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Performance score7.6
Thor: Ragnarok asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Hogun is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Heihachiro Isogai
We're Broke, My Lord! (2023)
Performance score7.2
We're Broke, My Lord! asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Heihachiro Isogai 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 Frisbee (voice)
Start here. Redline is the clearest statement of what Tadanobu Asano does — accessible, 102 minutes, and rated 7.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Tadanobu 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.
Silence (2016)
A deliberate change of key after Redline — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
A deliberate change of key after Silence — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
We're Broke, My Lord! (2023)
Keeps the comedy register of Thor: Ragnarok but asks for a colder reading of it.
Mortal Kombat II (2026)
A deliberate change of key after We're Broke, My Lord! — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Simon McQuoid
Director
2 films together
Notably Mortal Kombat II
Kenneth Branagh
Director
1 film together
Notably Thor
Peter Berg
Director
1 film together
Notably Battleship
Alan Taylor
Director
1 film together
Notably Thor: The Dark World
Martin Scorsese
Director
1 film together
Notably Silence
Taika Waititi
Director
1 film together
Notably Thor: Ragnarok
Roland Emmerich
Director
1 film together
Notably Midway
Ken Ninomiya
Director
1 film together
Notably Chiwawa-chan
Nobuhiko Obayashi
Director
1 film together
Notably Labyrinth of Cinema
Andrew Levitas
Director
1 film together
Notably Minamata
Cedric Nicolas-Troyan
Director
1 film together
Notably Kate
Takeshi Kitano
Director
1 film together
Notably Kubi
Pen-Ek Ratanaruang
Director
1 film together
Notably Morte Cucina
Yukiko Sode
Director
1 film together
Notably All the Lovers in the Night
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Simon McQuoid
Director
2 films together · 7.5 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Mortal Kombat IITaika Waititi
Director
1 film together · 7.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Thor: RagnarokRoland Emmerich
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
MidwayMartin Scorsese
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SilenceKenneth Branagh
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
ThorTakeshi Kitano
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
KubiAndrew Levitas
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
MinamataNobuhiko Obayashi
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Labyrinth of CinemaKen Ninomiya
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Chiwawa-chanAlan Taylor
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Thor: The Dark WorldCedric Nicolas-Troyan
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
KatePen-Ek Ratanaruang
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Morte CucinaPeter Berg
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BattleshipYukiko Sode
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
All the Lovers in the NightSix 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
Thor: Ragnarok
as Hogun
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Minamata
as Tatsuo Matsumura
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Mortal Kombat II
as Lord Raiden
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Thor: Ragnarok
as Hogun
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Redline
as Frisbee (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. Tadanobu Asano 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.
Action Legend
Awarded
11 catalogue titles in action, 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
Mortal Kombat II
as Lord Raiden
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Mortal Kombat II
as Lord Raiden
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Minamata
as Tatsuo Matsumura
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Outsider
as Kiyoshi
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Mortal Kombat II
as Lord Raiden
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Mortal Kombat II
as Lord Raiden
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Kubi
as Kuroda Kanbei
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Morte Cucina
as Artist
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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