Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#2550
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Masi Oka 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.
Masi Oka appears in 13 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Masi. Spies in Disguise is the clearest case: a film rated 7.5 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, comedy, thriller. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with David Leitch, Troy Quane, Jon Turteltaub and others, Masi Oka 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.
Spies in Disguise (2019) as Kimura (voice) · Bullet Train (2022) as Conductor · Friends with Benefits (2011) as Darin Arturo Morena
Career snapshot
Ranked #2550 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
13
2002–2022
Career length
20 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.5
Spies in Disguise
Average Nutevio score
6.1
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.5
Spies in Disguise
Most frequent director
Will Gluck
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Will Gluck
Most common genre
Comedy
10 titles
Average runtime
1h 43m
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
2020s
7.4 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Bullet Train — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
7.4
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
7.4
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2000s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Fired Up!, Get Smart, The Promotion.
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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.11 film | — |
| Action | 6.21 film | 7.02 films | 7.41 film |
| Thriller | 6.21 film | — | 7.41 film |
| Comedy | 5.87 films | 7.02 films | 7.41 film |
| Crime | 5.72 films | 4.31 film | — |
| Romance | 5.82 films | 6.61 film | — |
| Horror | — | 5.42 films | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2002Austin Powers in Goldmember
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Japanese Pedestrian.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
7.5 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
2022Bullet Train
The current state of the argument, as Conductor.
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
as Kimura (voice)
Directed by Troy Quane
as Conductor
Directed by David Leitch
as Darin Arturo Morena
Directed by Will Gluck
as Toshi
Directed by Jon Turteltaub
as Detective Sasaki
Directed by Adam Wingard
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
Kimura (voice)
Spies in Disguise (2019)
Performance score7.3
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Kimura (voice) gives Masi Oka a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Conductor
Bullet Train (2022)
Performance score7.2
Bullet Train asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Conductor is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Darin Arturo Morena
Friends with Benefits (2011)
Performance score6.6
Friends with Benefits asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Darin Arturo Morena is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Toshi
The Meg (2018)
Performance score6.5
The Meg asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Toshi 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 Kimura (voice)
Start here. Spies in Disguise is the clearest statement of what Masi Oka does — accessible, 102 minutes, and rated 7.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Masi 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.
Friends with Benefits (2011)
Keeps the comedy register of Spies in Disguise but asks for a colder reading of it.
Death Note (2017)
A deliberate change of key after Friends with Benefits — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Meg (2018)
Keeps the horror register of Death Note but asks for a colder reading of it.
Bullet Train (2022)
Keeps the action register of The Meg but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Will Gluck
Director
2 films together
Notably Friends with Benefits
Jay Roach
Director
1 film together
Notably Austin Powers in Goldmember
John Hamburg
Director
1 film together
Notably Along Came Polly
Robert Ben Garant
Director
1 film together
Notably Balls of Fury
Steven Conrad
Director
1 film together
Notably The Promotion
Peter Segal
Director
1 film together
Notably Get Smart
Adam Wingard
Director
1 film together
Notably Death Note
Jon Turteltaub
Director
1 film together
Notably The Meg
Troy Quane
Director
1 film together
Notably Spies in Disguise
David Leitch
Director
1 film together
Notably Bullet Train
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Will Gluck
Director
2 films together · 6.3 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Friends with BenefitsTroy Quane
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Spies in DisguiseDavid Leitch
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Bullet TrainJon Turteltaub
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 MegPeter Segal
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Get SmartJohn Hamburg
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Along Came PollyJay Roach
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Austin Powers in GoldmemberSteven Conrad
Director
1 film together · 5.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The PromotionRobert Ben Garant
Director
1 film together · 5.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Balls of FuryAdam Wingard
Director
1 film together · 4.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Death NoteSix 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
Bullet Train
as Conductor
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Jobs
as Ken Tanaka
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Spies in Disguise
as Kimura (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde
as Congressional Intern (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Spies in Disguise
as Kimura (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. Masi Oka 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
20 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.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
10 catalogue titles in comedy, 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
Spies in Disguise
as Kimura (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Bullet Train
as Conductor
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Jobs
as Ken Tanaka
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Bullet Train
as Conductor
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Spies in Disguise
as Kimura (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Spies in Disguise
as Kimura (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Spies in Disguise
as Kimura (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Meg
as Toshi
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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