Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#51635
of 909177 performers
Top 10%
Atsuko Maeda works on quiet performance 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.
Atsuko Maeda appears in 8 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Atsuko. Baby Assassins 3 is the clearest case: a film rated 8.2 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, versatility, transformation. 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 Yugo Sakamoto, Atsuko Maeda, Tōya Satō and others, Atsuko Maeda 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.
Baby Assassins 3 (2024) as Minami Iruka · The Confidence Man JP - The Movie - (2019) as Suzuki · Caution, Hazardous Wife: The Movie (2021) as Reiko Saegusa
Career snapshot
Ranked #51635 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
8
2019–2024
Career length
5 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.2
Baby Assassins 3
Average Nutevio score
6.1
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.2
Baby Assassins 3
Most frequent director
Akira Tanaka
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Akira Tanaka
Most common genre
Comedy
6 titles
Average runtime
1h 46m
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
6.1
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
6.8 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. The Confidence Man JP - The Movie -, To the Ends of the Earth, Masquerade Hotel — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
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
2010s
6.8
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. The Confidence Man JP - The Movie -, To the Ends of the Earth, Masquerade Hotel.
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 | 6.41 film | 8.21 film |
| Action | — | 7.72 films |
| Comedy | 7.31 film | 5.75 films |
| Crime | 6.71 film | 8.21 film |
| Romance | — | 7.21 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2019The Confidence Man JP - The Movie -
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Suzuki.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2024Baby Assassins 3
8.2 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 Minami Iruka.
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.
8 of 8 films
as Minami Iruka
Directed by Yugo Sakamoto
as Reiko Saegusa
Directed by Tōya Satō
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.
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The defining work
#1
Minami Iruka
Baby Assassins 3 (2024)
Performance score8.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Minami Iruka gives Atsuko Maeda a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Reiko Saegusa
Caution, Hazardous Wife: The Movie (2021)
Performance score7.3
Caution, Hazardous Wife: The Movie asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Reiko Saegusa is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Suzuki
The Confidence Man JP - The Movie - (2019)
Performance score7.2
The Confidence Man JP - The Movie - asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Suzuki is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Yoko
To the Ends of the Earth (2019)
Performance score7.1
To the Ends of the Earth asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Yoko 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 Minami Iruka
Start here. Baby Assassins 3 is the clearest statement of what Atsuko Maeda does — accessible, 113 minutes, and rated 8.2 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Atsuko 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.
The Confidence Man JP - The Movie - (2019)
Keeps the comedy register of Baby Assassins 3 but asks for a colder reading of it.
To the Ends of the Earth (2019)
A deliberate change of key after The Confidence Man JP - The Movie - — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Caution, Hazardous Wife: The Movie (2021)
A deliberate change of key after To the Ends of the Earth — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Supporting Actors in Byplaywood (2021)
Keeps the comedy register of Caution, Hazardous Wife: The Movie but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Akira Tanaka
Director
2 films together
Notably The Confidence Man JP - The Movie -
Masayuki Suzuki
Director
1 film together
Notably Masquerade Hotel
Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Director
1 film together
Notably To the Ends of the Earth
Tōya Satō
Director
1 film together
Notably Caution, Hazardous Wife: The Movie
Atsuko Maeda
Director
1 film together
Notably Communication to be understood
Yugo Sakamoto
Director
1 film together
Notably Baby Assassins 3
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Akira Tanaka
Director
2 films together · 6.9 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The Confidence Man JP - The Movie -Yugo Sakamoto
Director
1 film together · 8.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Baby Assassins 3Tōya Satō
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Caution, Hazardous Wife: The MovieMasayuki Suzuki
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Masquerade HotelKiyoshi Kurosawa
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
To the Ends of the EarthAtsuko Maeda
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Communication to be understoodSix 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
Baby Assassins 3
as Minami Iruka
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Caution, Hazardous Wife: The Movie
as Reiko Saegusa
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Baby Assassins 3
as Minami Iruka
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Supporting Actors in Byplaywood
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Baby Assassins 3
as Minami Iruka
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. Atsuko Maeda 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
6 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
Baby Assassins 3
as Minami Iruka
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Baby Assassins 3
as Minami Iruka
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Caution, Hazardous Wife: The Movie
as Reiko Saegusa
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Masquerade Hotel
as Keiko Takayama
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Baby Assassins 3
as Minami Iruka
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Baby Assassins 3
as Minami Iruka
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Baby Assassins 3
as Minami Iruka
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
To the Ends of the Earth
as Yoko
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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Built a career in the same territory: drama and action
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Mark Ruffalo
Built a career in the same territory: crime and mystery
Christian Bale
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and drama
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and drama
Have your say
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Reference
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