Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#1543
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Xie Miao represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 32 years in, and Xie is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Xie Miao appears in 24 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Xie. Matchless Hero Fang Shiyu is the clearest case: a film rated 8.5 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, screen presence. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for action, comedy, crime. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Kenji Tanigaki, Guo Yulong, Wong Jing and others, Xie Miao 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.
Matchless Hero Fang Shiyu (2019) as Fang Shiyu · Great God Monkey 2: Xiang Mo Pian (2020) as Sun Xiaotian · The Furious (2026) as Wang Wei
Career snapshot
Ranked #1543 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
24
1994–2026
Career length
32 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.5
Matchless Hero Fang Shiyu
Average Nutevio score
5.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.5
Matchless Hero Fang Shiyu
Most frequent director
Wong Jing
3 films together
Longest collaboration
3×
With Wong Jing
Most common genre
Action
19 titles
Average runtime
1h 28m
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
1990s
6.8 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. The Enforcer, Legend of the Red Dragon, God of Gamblers' Return — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
6.8
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
6.8
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1990s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Enforcer, Legend of the Red Dragon, God of Gamblers' Return.
Most productive era
2020s
17 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 | 1990s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | — | 6.87 films |
| Action | 6.83 films | 6.32 films | 6.114 films |
| Thriller | 6.92 films | 6.61 film | 7.21 film |
| Comedy | 6.82 films | 4.01 film | 7.32 films |
| Crime | 6.71 film | — | 6.76 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Hung Man-Ting.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
8.5 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
2026The Furious
The current state of the argument, as Wang Wei.
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.
24 of 24 films
as Sun Xiaotian
Directed by Unknown
as Wang Wei
Directed by Kenji Tanigaki
as Cheng Xiazi
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
Fang Shiyu
Matchless Hero Fang Shiyu (2019)
Performance score8.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Fang Shiyu gives Xie Miao a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Sun Xiaotian
Great God Monkey 2: Xiang Mo Pian (2020)
Performance score8.5
Great God Monkey 2: Xiang Mo Pian asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Sun Xiaotian is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Wang Wei
The Furious (2026)
Performance score7.8
The Furious asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Wang Wei is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Cheng Xiazi
Eye for an Eye (2022)
Performance score7.8
Eye for an Eye asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Cheng Xiazi 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 Fang Shiyu
Start here. Matchless Hero Fang Shiyu is the clearest statement of what Xie Miao does — accessible, 82 minutes, and rated 8.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Xie 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.
Great God Monkey 2: Xiang Mo Pian (2020)
Same director as Matchless Hero Fang Shiyu, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Eye for an Eye (2022)
Same director as Great God Monkey 2: Xiang Mo Pian, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Fight Against Evil 2 (2023)
Same director as Eye for an Eye, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
The Furious (2026)
Keeps the action register of Fight Against Evil 2 but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Wong Jing
Director
3 films together
Notably Legend of the Red Dragon
Corey Yuen
Director
1 film together
Notably The Enforcer
Tsui Hark
Director
1 film together
Notably The Taking of Tiger Mountain
Guo Yulong
Director
1 film together
Notably Monkey King Fight Lion Camel
Kenji Tanigaki
Director
1 film together
Notably The Furious
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Wong Jing
Director
3 films together · 6.7 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Legend of the Red DragonKenji Tanigaki
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The FuriousCorey Yuen
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The EnforcerTsui 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
The Taking of Tiger MountainGuo Yulong
Director
1 film together · 5.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Monkey King Fight Lion CamelSix 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
Matchless Hero Fang Shiyu
as Fang Shiyu
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Fighting Darksider
as Zhang Ke
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Matchless Hero Fang Shiyu
as Fang Shiyu
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Blade of Fury
as Blind Swordsman
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Matchless Hero Fang Shiyu
as Fang Shiyu
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. Xie Miao 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
32 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.
Action Legend
Awarded
19 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
Matchless Hero Fang Shiyu
as Fang Shiyu
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Matchless Hero Fang Shiyu
as Fang Shiyu
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Fighting Darksider
as Zhang Ke
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Furious
as Wang Wei
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Matchless Hero Fang Shiyu
as Fang Shiyu
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Ip Man: The Awakening
as Ip Man
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Fight Against Evil 3
as Li Hongqi
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Eye for an Eye
as Cheng Xiazi
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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