Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#31579
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Masaki Miura 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.
Masaki Miura appears in 13 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Masaki. Climbing for Life is the clearest case: a film rated 10.0 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, quiet performance, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for war, drama, history. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Sho Miyake, Takahisa Zeze, Hiroshi Kurosaki and others, Masaki Miura 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.
Climbing for Life (2025) · YUKIKAZE (2025) · Gift of Fire (2021)
Career snapshot
Ranked #31579 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
13
2018–2025
Career length
7 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
10.0
Climbing for Life
Average Nutevio score
7.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
10.0
Climbing for Life
Most frequent director
Takahisa Zeze
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Takahisa Zeze
Most common genre
Drama
13 titles
Average runtime
1h 51m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.1
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
6.9
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
7.7 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. YUKIKAZE, Climbing for Life, Knuckle Girl — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
7.7
Across 10 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
7.7
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2010s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Promised Land, Be My Master, The Outsider.
Most productive era
2020s
10 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 | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.43 films | 7.710 films |
| Action | — | 6.73 films |
| Crime | 6.22 films | — |
| Romance | — | 7.71 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2018Be My Master
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Seo [Akino's husband].
First Nutevio masterpiece
2025YUKIKAZE
The first film here to clear 9.0 on our scale — a threshold fewer than one film in ten reaches.
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
10.0 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. 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.
13 of 13 films
Directed by Hiroshi Kurosaki
Directed by Takahisa Zeze
as Theater Critic
Directed by Isao Yukisada
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
Climbing for Life
Climbing for Life (2025)
Performance score9.5
The performance the rest of the career is read through. The role gives Masaki Miura a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
YUKIKAZE
YUKIKAZE (2025)
Performance score8.9
YUKIKAZE asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. The role is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Gift of Fire
Gift of Fire (2021)
Performance score8.2
Gift of Fire asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. The role is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Fragments of the Last Will
Fragments of the Last Will (2022)
Performance score7.7
Fragments of the Last Will asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. The role 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
Start here. Climbing for Life is the clearest statement of what Masaki Miura does — accessible, 130 minutes, and rated 10.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Masaki 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.
Theatre: A Love Story (2020)
Keeps the drama register of Climbing for Life but asks for a colder reading of it.
Gift of Fire (2021)
Keeps the drama register of Theatre: A Love Story but asks for a colder reading of it.
Fragments of the Last Will (2022)
Keeps the drama register of Gift of Fire but asks for a colder reading of it.
YUKIKAZE (2025)
Keeps the drama register of Fragments of the Last Will but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Takahisa Zeze
Director
2 films together
Notably Fragments of the Last Will
Hideo Jojo
Director
1 film together
Notably Be My Master
Isao Yukisada
Director
1 film together
Notably Theatre: A Love Story
Setsuro Wakamatsu
Director
1 film together
Notably Fukushima 50
Hiroshi Kurosaki
Director
1 film together
Notably Gift of Fire
Sho Miyake
Director
1 film together
Notably Small, Slow But Steady
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Takahisa Zeze
Director
2 films together · 7.0 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Fragments of the Last WillHiroshi Kurosaki
Director
1 film together · 8.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Gift of FireIsao Yukisada
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Theatre: A Love StorySho Miyake
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Small, Slow But SteadyHideo Jojo
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Be My MasterSetsuro Wakamatsu
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fukushima 50Six 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
Climbing for Life
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Gift of Fire
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Climbing for Life
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Climbing for Life
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Climbing for Life
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. Masaki Miura 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
13 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
Climbing for Life
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Climbing for Life
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Fragments of the Last Will
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Outsider
as Kentaro
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Climbing for Life
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Baragaki: Unbroken Samurai
as Teizo Miyabe
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Gift of Fire
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Promised Land
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Robert Downey Jr.
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Mark Ruffalo
Built a career in the same territory: crime and mystery
Matt Damon
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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