Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#2576
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Mark Dacascos represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 32 years in, and Mark is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Mark Dacascos appears in 17 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Mark. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum is the clearest case: a film rated 7.4 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, action. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for action, crime, science fiction. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Aaron Schoenke, James Bamford, Tomek Bagiński and others, Mark Dacascos 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.
John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019) as Zero · Batman: Soul of the Dragon (2021) as Richard Dragon (voice) · Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001) as Mani
Career snapshot
Ranked #2576 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
17
1994–2026
Career length
32 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.4
John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
Average Nutevio score
5.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.4
John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
Most frequent director
Aaron Schoenke
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Aaron Schoenke
Most common genre
Action
15 titles
Average runtime
1h 34m
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
6.3
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
6.0 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Code Name: The Cleaner, Cradle 2 the Grave, Brotherhood of the Wolf — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.0
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.0
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. The Island of Dr. Moreau, Double Dragon.
Most productive era
2020s
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 | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.11 film | — | — |
| Action | 4.61 film | 6.03 films | 6.33 films | 5.28 films |
| Thriller | — | — | 6.42 films | 5.33 films |
| Comedy | 4.61 film | 5.21 film | — | — |
| Crime | — | 5.72 films | 6.42 films | 6.52 films |
| Horror | 4.91 film | 6.71 film | 6.11 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1994Double Dragon
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Jimmy Lee.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2019John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
7.4 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
2026Legend of the White Dragon
The current state of the argument, as Xang.
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 Zero
Directed by Chad Stahelski
as Richard Dragon (voice)
Directed by Sam Liu
as Mani
Directed by Unknown
as The Driver
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
Zero
John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019)
Performance score7.5
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Zero gives Mark Dacascos a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Richard Dragon (voice)
Batman: Soul of the Dragon (2021)
Performance score7.1
Batman: Soul of the Dragon asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Richard Dragon (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Shinshiro
Blade of the 47 Ronin (2022)
Performance score6.9
Blade of the 47 Ronin asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Shinshiro is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Mani
Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001)
Performance score6.9
Brotherhood of the Wolf asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mani 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 Zero
Start here. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum is the clearest statement of what Mark Dacascos does — accessible, 131 minutes, and rated 7.4 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Mark 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.
Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001)
Keeps the action register of John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Driver (2019)
Same director as Brotherhood of the Wolf, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
Batman: Soul of the Dragon (2021)
Keeps the action register of The Driver but asks for a colder reading of it.
Blade of the 47 Ronin (2022)
Keeps the action register of Batman: Soul of the Dragon but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
John Frankenheimer
Director
1 film together
Notably The Island of Dr. Moreau
Andrzej Bartkowiak
Director
1 film together
Notably Cradle 2 the Grave
Les Mayfield
Director
1 film together
Notably Code Name: The Cleaner
Chad Stahelski
Director
1 film together
Notably John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
Christopher Ray
Director
1 film together
Notably Assault on VA-33
Sam Liu
Director
1 film together
Notably Batman: Soul of the Dragon
Ron Yuan
Director
1 film together
Notably Blade of the 47 Ronin
Tomek Bagiński
Director
1 film together
Notably Knights of the Zodiac
James Bamford
Director
1 film together
Notably Jade
Aaron Schoenke
Director
1 film together
Notably Legend of the White Dragon
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Chad Stahelski
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
John Wick: Chapter 3 - ParabellumSam Liu
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Batman: Soul of the DragonRon Yuan
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Blade of the 47 RoninTomek Bagiński
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Knights of the ZodiacAndrzej Bartkowiak
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Cradle 2 the GraveChristopher Ray
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Assault on VA-33Les Mayfield
Director
1 film together · 5.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Code Name: The CleanerJames Bamford
Director
1 film together · 4.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
JadeJohn Frankenheimer
Director
1 film together · 4.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Island of Dr. MoreauAaron Schoenke
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Legend of the White DragonSix 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
John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
as Zero
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Batman: Soul of the Dragon
as Richard Dragon (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
John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
as Zero
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
as Zero
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
as Zero
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. Mark Dacascos 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
32 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
15 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
John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
as Zero
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
as Zero
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Batman: Soul of the Dragon
as Richard Dragon (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Blade of the 47 Ronin
as Shinshiro
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
as Zero
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Batman: Soul of the Dragon
as Richard Dragon (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Batman: Soul of the Dragon
as Richard Dragon (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Code Name: The Cleaner
as Eric Hauck
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
Which Mark Dacascos performance holds up best?
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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