Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#18598
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Uli Latukefu 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.
Uli Latukefu appears in 7 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Uli. Black Adam is the clearest case: a film rated 6.8 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, drama, action. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Taika Waititi, Jaume Collet-Serra, Kiel McNaughton and others, Uli Latukefu 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.
Black Adam (2022) as The Champion · The Legend of Baron To'a (2020) as Fritz · Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan (2019) as Bombardier Ray Ngatai
Career snapshot
Ranked #18598 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
7
2017–2023
Career length
6 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.8
Black Adam
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
6.8
The Legend of Baron To'a
Most frequent director
Taika Waititi
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Taika Waititi
Most common genre
Drama
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 50m
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
6.5 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan, Alien: Covenant — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.5
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
6.5
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. Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan, Alien: Covenant.
Most productive era
2020s
5 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 | 6.81 film | 6.33 films |
| Action | 6.81 film | 6.53 films |
| Thriller | — | 6.01 film |
| Comedy | — | 6.63 films |
| Crime | — | 6.01 film |
| Horror | 6.21 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2017Alien: Covenant
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Cole.
Highest rated performance
2019Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan
6.8 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2023Next Goal Wins
The current state of the argument, as Nicky Salapu.
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.
7 of 7 films
as The Champion
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra
as Bombardier Ray Ngatai
Directed by Kriv Stenders
as Nicky Salapu
Directed by Taika Waititi
as Palau
Directed by Unknown
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
Fritz
The Legend of Baron To'a (2020)
Performance score7.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Fritz gives Uli Latukefu a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
The Champion
Black Adam (2022)
Performance score6.7
Black Adam asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. The Champion is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Bombardier Ray Ngatai
Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan (2019)
Performance score6.7
Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Bombardier Ray Ngatai is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Nicky Salapu
Next Goal Wins (2023)
Performance score6.5
Next Goal Wins asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Nicky Salapu 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 Fritz
Start here. The Legend of Baron To'a is the clearest statement of what Uli Latukefu does — accessible, 103 minutes, and rated 6.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Uli 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.
Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan (2019)
Keeps the action register of The Legend of Baron To'a but asks for a colder reading of it.
Black Adam (2022)
Keeps the action register of Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan but asks for a colder reading of it.
Black Site (2022)
Keeps the action register of Black Adam but asks for a colder reading of it.
Next Goal Wins (2023)
Keeps the drama register of Black Site but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Ridley Scott
Director
1 film together
Notably Alien: Covenant
Kriv Stenders
Director
1 film together
Notably Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan
Kiel McNaughton
Director
1 film together
Notably The Legend of Baron To'a
Jaume Collet-Serra
Director
1 film together
Notably Black Adam
Taika Waititi
Director
1 film together
Notably Next Goal Wins
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Jaume Collet-Serra
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Black AdamKiel McNaughton
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 Legend of Baron To'aKriv Stenders
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Danger Close: The Battle of Long TanTaika Waititi
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Next Goal WinsRidley Scott
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Alien: CovenantSix 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
Black Adam
as The Champion
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan
as Bombardier Ray Ngatai
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan
as Bombardier Ray Ngatai
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Black Adam
as The Champion
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Legend of Baron To'a
as Fritz
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. Uli Latukefu 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
4 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
Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan
as Bombardier Ray Ngatai
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Black Site
as Palau
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan
as Bombardier Ray Ngatai
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Black Site
as Palau
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Black Adam
as The Champion
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Black Adam
as The Champion
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan
as Bombardier Ray Ngatai
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
June Again
as Nick
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Harry Dean Stanton
Works with the same directors — Ridley Scott
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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