Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#420
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
George Takei represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 63 years in, and George is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
George Takei appears in 20 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without George. Mulan is the clearest case: a film rated 8.0 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 documentary, history, fantasy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Zack Ward, Chris Bailey, Sean McNamara and others, George Takei 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.
Mulan (1998) as First Ancestor (voice) · Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai Sword (2009) as Old Man Samurai (voice) · Kubo and the Two Strings (2016) as Hosato (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #420 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
20
1963–2026
Career length
63 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.0
Mulan
Average Nutevio score
5.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.9
Mulan
Most frequent director
Leonard Nimoy
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Leonard Nimoy
Most common genre
Adventure
10 titles
Average runtime
1h 37m
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
6.6
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
8.0 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. Mulan — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
8.0
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
7.9
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1960s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Green Berets, King Kong vs. Godzilla.
Most productive era
2020s
6 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 | 1960s | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.01 film | — | — | — | — | 6.01 film | — |
| Action | 6.51 film | — | 6.92 films | — | 7.12 films | — | 6.61 film |
| Thriller | — | — | 6.92 films | — | — | — | — |
| Comedy | 6.51 film | — | — | — | 6.73 films | 4.33 films | 5.32 films |
| Romance | — | — | — | — | — | 6.01 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Osamu Sakurai (voice) (uncredited).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1998Mulan
8.0 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
2026Hunky Jesus
The current state of the argument.
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 First Ancestor (voice)
Directed by Tony Bancroft
as Old Man Samurai (voice)
Directed by Christopher Berkeley
as Hosato (voice)
Directed by Travis Knight
as Cmdr. Hikaru Sulu
Directed by Leonard Nimoy
as Cmdr. Hikaru Sulu
Directed by Nicholas Meyer
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
First Ancestor (voice)
Mulan (1998)
Performance score7.8
The performance the rest of the career is read through. First Ancestor (voice) gives George Takei a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Old Man Samurai (voice)
Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai Sword (2009)
Performance score7.5
Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai Sword asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Old Man Samurai (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Hosato (voice)
Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)
Performance score7.4
Kubo and the Two Strings asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Hosato (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Cmdr. Hikaru Sulu
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
Performance score7.2
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Cmdr. Hikaru Sulu 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 First Ancestor (voice)
Start here. Mulan is the clearest statement of what George Takei does — accessible, 88 minutes, and rated 8.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet George 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.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
Keeps the adventure register of Mulan but asks for a colder reading of it.
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
Keeps the science fiction register of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan but asks for a colder reading of it.
Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai Sword (2009)
A deliberate change of key after Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)
Keeps the family register of Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai Sword but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Leonard Nimoy
Director
2 films together
Notably Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Thomas Montgomery
Director
1 film together
Notably King Kong vs. Godzilla
John Wayne
Director
1 film together
Notably The Green Berets
Robert Wise
Director
1 film together
Notably Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Nicholas Meyer
Director
1 film together
Notably Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Tony Bancroft
Director
1 film together
Notably Mulan
Lynne Southerland
Director
1 film together
Notably Mulan II
Christopher Berkeley
Director
1 film together
Notably Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai Sword
Tom Hanks
Director
1 film together
Notably Larry Crowne
Travis Knight
Director
1 film together
Notably Kubo and the Two Strings
Sean McNamara
Director
1 film together
Notably Aliens Stole My Body
Chris Bailey
Director
1 film together
Notably Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank
Zack Ward
Director
1 film together
Notably The Keepers of the 5 Kingdoms
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Leonard Nimoy
Director
2 films together · 6.8 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Star Trek IV: The Voyage HomeTony Bancroft
Director
1 film together · 8.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
MulanChristopher Berkeley
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai SwordTravis Knight
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Kubo and the Two StringsNicholas Meyer
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Star Trek II: The Wrath of KhanChris Bailey
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Paws of Fury: The Legend of HankRobert Wise
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Star Trek: The Motion PictureLynne Southerland
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mulan IIThomas Montgomery
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
King Kong vs. GodzillaTom Hanks
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Larry CrowneJohn Wayne
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Green BeretsZack Ward
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Keepers of the 5 KingdomsSean McNamara
Director
1 film together · 4.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Aliens Stole My BodySix 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
Mulan
as First Ancestor (voice)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Mulan
as First Ancestor (voice)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Mulan
as First Ancestor (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Great Buck Howard
as George Takei
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Mulan
as First Ancestor (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. George Takei 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
63 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.
Adventure Legend
Awarded
10 catalogue titles in adventure, 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
Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai Sword
as Old Man Samurai (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai Sword
as Old Man Samurai (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Mulan
as First Ancestor (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
as Lt. Cmdr. Hikaru Sulu
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai Sword
as Old Man Samurai (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
as Cmdr. Hikaru Sulu
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai Sword
as Old Man Samurai (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Green Berets
as Captain Nim
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Jamie Harris
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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