Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#8791
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Mako represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 41 years in, and Mako is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Mako appears in 12 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Mako. Memoirs of a Geisha is the clearest case: a film rated 7.6 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, horror, adventure. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Rob Marshall, Paul Hunter, Michael Bay and others, Mako 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.
Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) as Sakamoto · Seven Years in Tibet (1997) as Kungo Tsarong · Pearl Harbor (2001) as Admiral Yamamoto
Career snapshot
Ranked #8791 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
12
1966–2007
Career length
41 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.6
Memoirs of a Geisha
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.6
Memoirs of a Geisha
Most frequent director
Rob Marshall
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Rob Marshall
Most common genre
Drama
7 titles
Average runtime
2h 6m
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
1960s
6.7 average MV
The 1960s are where the work and the material meet. The Ugly Dachshund, The Sand Pebbles — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1960s
6.7
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1960s
7.0
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 Ugly Dachshund, The Sand Pebbles.
Most productive era
2000s
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 | 1960s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.72 films | — | 6.53 films | 7.32 films |
| Action | — | 6.62 films | 6.11 film | 5.42 films |
| Thriller | — | — | 6.22 films | 5.31 film |
| Comedy | 6.51 film | — | — | 5.82 films |
| Romance | — | — | — | 7.61 film |
| Horror | — | — | — | 5.31 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Kenji.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
7.6 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.
Most recent film
2007TMNT
The current state of the argument, as Splinter (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.
12 of 12 films
as Sakamoto
Directed by Rob Marshall
as Kungo Tsarong
Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud
as Po-han
Directed by Robert Wise
as Admiral Yamamoto
Directed by Michael Bay
as The Wizard / Narrator
Directed by John Milius
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
Sakamoto
Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)
Performance score7.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Sakamoto gives Mako a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Kungo Tsarong
Seven Years in Tibet (1997)
Performance score7.2
Seven Years in Tibet asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Kungo Tsarong is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Po-han
The Sand Pebbles (1966)
Performance score7.1
The Sand Pebbles asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Po-han is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Admiral Yamamoto
Pearl Harbor (2001)
Performance score6.9
Pearl Harbor asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Admiral Yamamoto 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 Sakamoto
Start here. Memoirs of a Geisha is the clearest statement of what Mako does — accessible, 146 minutes, and rated 7.6 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Mako 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 Sand Pebbles (1966)
Keeps the drama register of Memoirs of a Geisha but asks for a colder reading of it.
Conan the Barbarian (1982)
A deliberate change of key after The Sand Pebbles — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Seven Years in Tibet (1997)
Keeps the adventure register of Conan the Barbarian but asks for a colder reading of it.
Pearl Harbor (2001)
Keeps the drama register of Seven Years in Tibet but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Robert Wise
Director
1 film together
Notably The Sand Pebbles
Norman Tokar
Director
1 film together
Notably The Ugly Dachshund
John Milius
Director
1 film together
Notably Conan the Barbarian
Richard Fleischer
Director
1 film together
Notably Conan the Destroyer
John Schlesinger
Director
1 film together
Notably Pacific Heights
Philip Kaufman
Director
1 film together
Notably Rising Sun
Jean-Jacques Annaud
Director
1 film together
Notably Seven Years in Tibet
Michael Bay
Director
1 film together
Notably Pearl Harbor
Paul Hunter
Director
1 film together
Notably Bulletproof Monk
Rob Marshall
Director
1 film together
Notably Memoirs of a Geisha
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Rob Marshall
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Memoirs of a GeishaJean-Jacques Annaud
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Seven Years in TibetMichael Bay
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Pearl HarborJohn Milius
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Conan the BarbarianRobert Wise
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Sand PebblesNorman Tokar
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Ugly DachshundJohn Schlesinger
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Pacific HeightsRichard Fleischer
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Conan the DestroyerPhilip 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
Rising SunPaul Hunter
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Bulletproof MonkSix 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
Memoirs of a Geisha
as Sakamoto
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Memoirs of a Geisha
as Sakamoto
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Memoirs of a Geisha
as Sakamoto
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Pearl Harbor
as Admiral Yamamoto
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Memoirs of a Geisha
as Sakamoto
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. Mako 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
41 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
7 catalogue titles in drama, 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
Memoirs of a Geisha
as Sakamoto
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Pacific Heights
as Toshio Watanabe
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Memoirs of a Geisha
as Sakamoto
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Pacific Heights
as Toshio Watanabe
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Conan the Barbarian
as The Wizard / Narrator
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Rise: Blood Hunter
as Poe
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Seven Years in Tibet
as Kungo Tsarong
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Conan the Destroyer
as Akiro 'The Wizard'
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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