Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#1303
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Stephen Chow 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.
Stephen Chow appears in 11 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Stephen. A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella is the clearest case: a film rated 7.7 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 science fiction, comedy, fantasy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Stephen Chow, Vincent Kok Tak-Chiu, Lee Lik-Chi and others, Stephen Chow 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.
A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella (1995) as Joker / Monkey King · Kung Fu Hustle (2004) as Sing · A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora's Box (1995) as Joker / Monkey King
Career snapshot
Ranked #1303 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
11
1991–2008
Career length
17 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.7
A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella
Average Nutevio score
7.3
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.7
A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella
Most frequent director
Stephen Chow
3 films together
Longest collaboration
3×
With Stephen Chow
Most common genre
Comedy
11 titles
Average runtime
1h 40m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.0
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
6.7
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
7.4 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. CJ7, Kung Fu Hustle, Shaolin Soccer — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
7.4
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
7.3
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. Gorgeous, The God of Cookery, A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora's Box.
Most productive era
1990s
8 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 | 2000s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.55 films | 7.31 film |
| Action | 7.15 films | 7.42 films |
| Comedy | 7.28 films | 7.43 films |
| Crime | 7.01 film | 7.51 film |
| Romance | 7.34 films | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Chow Sing Sing.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1995A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella
7.7 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
2008CJ7
The current state of the argument, as Ti Chow.
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.
11 of 11 films
as Joker / Monkey King
Directed by Jeffrey Lau Chun-Wai
as Sing
Directed by Stephen Chow
as Joker / Monkey King
Directed by Jeffrey Lau Chun-Wai
as Pao Lung Sing
Directed by Wong Jing
as Tang Pak Fu / Wah On
Directed by Lee Lik-Chi
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
Joker / Monkey King
A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella (1995)
Performance score8.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Joker / Monkey King gives Stephen Chow a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Sing
Kung Fu Hustle (2004)
Performance score8.1
Kung Fu Hustle asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Sing is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Joker / Monkey King
A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora's Box (1995)
Performance score8.1
A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora's Box asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Joker / Monkey King is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Pao Lung Sing
Hail the Judge (1994)
Performance score8.1
Hail the Judge asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Pao Lung Sing 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 Joker / Monkey King
Start here. A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella is the clearest statement of what Stephen Chow does — accessible, 99 minutes, and rated 7.7 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Stephen 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.
Flirting Scholar (1993)
Keeps the romance register of A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella but asks for a colder reading of it.
Hail the Judge (1994)
Keeps the comedy register of Flirting Scholar but asks for a colder reading of it.
A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora's Box (1995)
Keeps the comedy register of Hail the Judge but asks for a colder reading of it.
Kung Fu Hustle (2004)
Keeps the action register of A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora's Box but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Lee Lik-Chi
Director
3 films together
Notably Flirting Scholar
Stephen Chow
Director
3 films together
Notably Kung Fu Hustle
Jeffrey Lau Chun-Wai
Director
2 films together
Notably A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella
Wong Jing
Director
1 film together
Notably Hail the Judge
Vincent Kok Tak-Chiu
Director
1 film together
Notably Gorgeous
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Stephen Chow
Director
3 films together · 7.4 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Kung Fu HustleLee Lik-Chi
Director
3 films together · 7.2 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Flirting ScholarJeffrey Lau Chun-Wai
Director
2 films together · 7.6 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: CinderellaWong Jing
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hail the JudgeVincent Kok Tak-Chiu
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
GorgeousSix 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
A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella
as Joker / Monkey King
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella
as Joker / Monkey King
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella
as Joker / Monkey King
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Gorgeous
as Policeman with Dog
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella
as Joker / Monkey King
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. Stephen Chow 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
11 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
A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella
as Joker / Monkey King
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Kung Fu Hustle
as Sing
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora's Box
as Joker / Monkey King
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Fight Back to School
as Chow Sing Sing
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella
as Joker / Monkey King
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Kung Fu Hustle
as Sing
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Flirting Scholar
as Tang Pak Fu / Wah On
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Shaolin Soccer
as Mighty Steel Leg / Sing
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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