Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#1116
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Keone Young represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 37 years in, and Keone is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Keone Young appears in 17 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Keone. Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender is the clearest case: a film rated 8.6 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 action, fantasy, adventure. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Lauren Montgomery, Shannon Tindle, Mark A. Altman and others, Keone Young 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.
Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender (2026) as Avatar Roku (voice) · Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai Sword (2009) as Matsuhiro (voice) · Ultraman: Rising (2024) as Dr. Onda (voice)
Career snapshot
Ranked #1116 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
17
1989–2026
Career length
37 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.6
Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
9.3
Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender
Most frequent director
Brian Taylor
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Brian Taylor
Most common genre
Action
10 titles
Average runtime
1h 38m
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
6.8
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
2020s
7.3 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender, Ultraman: Rising, Best Christmas Movies Ever! — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
7.3
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
7.6
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1980s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Black Rain.
Most productive era
2000s
7 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 | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.61 film | 5.11 film | — | 6.11 film | — |
| Action | 6.61 film | — | 6.95 films | 6.32 films | 8.02 films |
| Thriller | 6.61 film | — | 6.42 films | 6.01 film | — |
| Comedy | — | 5.62 films | 6.34 films | 6.32 films | — |
| Crime | — | — | 6.42 films | 6.01 film | — |
| Romance | — | — | 5.52 films | 6.11 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1989Black Rain
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Karaoke Singer.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
2026Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender
8.6 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 Avatar Roku (voice).
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.
17 of 17 films
as Avatar Roku (voice)
Directed by Lauren Montgomery
as Dr. Onda (voice)
Directed by Shannon Tindle
as Matsuhiro (voice)
Directed by Christopher Berkeley
as Commander Uehara Daizo / Saico-Tek / Sushi Shop Owner (voice)
Directed by Heather A. Maxwell
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
Avatar Roku (voice)
Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender (2026)
Performance score8.3
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Avatar Roku (voice) gives Keone Young a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Dr. Onda (voice)
Ultraman: Rising (2024)
Performance score7.5
Ultraman: Rising asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Dr. Onda (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Matsuhiro (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. Matsuhiro (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Commander Uehara Daizo / Saico-Tek / Sushi Shop Owner (voice)
Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo (2006)
Performance score7.2
Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Commander Uehara Daizo / Saico-Tek / Sushi Shop Owner (voice) 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 Avatar Roku (voice)
Start here. Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender is the clearest statement of what Keone Young does — accessible, 99 minutes, and rated 8.6 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Keone 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.
Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo (2006)
Keeps the action register of Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender but asks for a colder reading of it.
Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai Sword (2009)
Keeps the action register of Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo but asks for a colder reading of it.
Ultraman: Rising (2024)
Keeps the action register of Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai Sword but asks for a colder reading of it.
Best Christmas Movies Ever! (2024)
A deliberate change of key after Ultraman: Rising — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Brian Taylor
Director
2 films together
Notably Crank
Ridley Scott
Director
1 film together
Notably Black Rain
Rob Reiner
Director
1 film together
Notably North
Lynne Southerland
Director
1 film together
Notably Mulan II
Heather A. Maxwell
Director
1 film together
Notably Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo
Christopher Berkeley
Director
1 film together
Notably Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai Sword
Fisher Stevens
Director
1 film together
Notably Stand Up Guys
Barry Sonnenfeld
Director
1 film together
Notably Men in Black 3
Philip Kaufman
Director
1 film together
Notably Hemingway & Gellhorn
Chris Buck
Director
1 film together
Notably Wish
Mark A. Altman
Director
1 film together
Notably Best Christmas Movies Ever!
Shannon Tindle
Director
1 film together
Notably Ultraman: Rising
Lauren Montgomery
Director
1 film together
Notably Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Brian Taylor
Director
2 films together · 6.4 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
CrankLauren Montgomery
Director
1 film together · 8.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Avatar Aang: The Last AirbenderChristopher 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 SwordShannon Tindle
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Ultraman: RisingHeather A. Maxwell
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Teen Titans: Trouble in TokyoMark A. Altman
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Best Christmas Movies Ever!Barry Sonnenfeld
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Men in Black 3Ridley Scott
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Black RainLynne 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 IIChris Buck
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
WishPhilip Kaufman
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hemingway & GellhornFisher Stevens
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Stand Up GuysRob Reiner
Director
1 film together · 5.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
NorthSix 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
Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender
as Avatar Roku (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
Wish
as Mountain Climber / Tall Man Tourist / Guard 1 (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
Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender
as Avatar Roku (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Dr. Dolittle 2
as Bee (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender
as Avatar Roku (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. Keone Young 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
37 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
10 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
Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender
as Avatar Roku (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender
as Avatar Roku (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Wish
as Mountain Climber / Tall Man Tourist / Guard 1 (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai Sword
as Matsuhiro (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender
as Avatar Roku (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender
as Avatar Roku (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai Sword
as Matsuhiro (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Men in Black 3
as Mr. Wu
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Harry Dean Stanton
Works with the same directors — Ridley Scott
Have your say
Community
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Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
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Reference
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