Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#1072
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Ming-Na Wen represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 31 years in, and Ming-Na is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Ming-Na Wen appears in 16 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Ming-Na. Mulan is the clearest case: a film rated 8.0 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, adventure, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Jonathan Entwistle, Bobby Roth, Niki Caro and others, Ming-Na Wen 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.
Mulan (1998) as Mulan (voice) · Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018) as Mulan (voice) · Celebrating Marvel's Stan Lee (2019) as Self
Career snapshot
Ranked #1072 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
16
1994–2025
Career length
31 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.0
Mulan
Average Nutevio score
5.3
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.9
Mulan
Most frequent director
Jonathan Entwistle
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Jonathan Entwistle
Most common genre
Action
9 titles
Average runtime
1h 22m
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
2010s
6.4 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Marvel Rising: Heart of Iron, Celebrating Marvel's Stan Lee, Ralph Breaks the Internet — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
6.4
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
6.4
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. Mulan, Street Fighter.
Most productive era
2020s
6 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 | — | 5.11 film | — | 7.01 film |
| Action | 4.71 film | 6.33 films | 6.82 films | 6.53 films |
| Thriller | — | 6.21 film | 4.81 film | — |
| Comedy | 4.71 film | 6.51 film | 7.21 film | 3.31 film |
| Romance | — | — | — | 3.31 film |
| Horror | — | 5.11 film | 4.81 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1994Street Fighter
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Chun-Li.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1998Mulan
8.0 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.
Most recent film
2025Tether
The current state of the argument, as Captain Lingard.
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.
16 of 16 films
as Mulan (voice)
Directed by Tony Bancroft
as Mulan (voice)
Directed by Lynne Southerland
as Dr. Fong
Directed by Jonathan Entwistle
as Mulan (voice)
Directed by Phil Johnston
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
Mulan (voice)
Mulan (1998)
Performance score8.5
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Mulan (voice) gives Ming-Na Wen a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Mulan (voice)
Mulan II (2004)
Performance score7.2
Mulan II asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mulan (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Dr. Fong
Karate Kid: Legends (2025)
Performance score7.1
Karate Kid: Legends asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Dr. Fong is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Mulan (voice)
Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018)
Performance score7.1
Ralph Breaks the Internet asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mulan (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 Mulan (voice)
Start here. Mulan is the clearest statement of what Ming-Na Wen does — accessible, 88 minutes, and rated 8.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Ming-Na 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.
Mulan II (2004)
Keeps the family register of Mulan but asks for a colder reading of it.
Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018)
Keeps the action register of Mulan II but asks for a colder reading of it.
Celebrating Marvel's Stan Lee (2019)
A deliberate change of key after Ralph Breaks the Internet — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Karate Kid: Legends (2025)
A deliberate change of key after Celebrating Marvel's Stan Lee — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Steven E. de Souza
Director
1 film together
Notably Street Fighter
Tony Bancroft
Director
1 film together
Notably Mulan
Lynne Southerland
Director
1 film together
Notably Mulan II
Nelson McCormick
Director
1 film together
Notably Prom Night
Paul McGuigan
Director
1 film together
Notably Push
Greg McLean
Director
1 film together
Notably The Darkness
Phil Johnston
Director
1 film together
Notably Ralph Breaks the Internet
Sol Choi
Director
1 film together
Notably Marvel Rising: Heart of Iron
Niki Caro
Director
1 film together
Notably Mulan
Bobby Roth
Director
1 film together
Notably Good Men
Jonathan Entwistle
Director
1 film together
Notably Karate Kid: Legends
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Tony Bancroft
Director
1 film together · 8.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
MulanPhil Johnston
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Ralph Breaks the InternetJonathan Entwistle
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Karate Kid: LegendsNiki Caro
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
MulanLynne 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 IISol Choi
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Marvel Rising: Heart of IronPaul McGuigan
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
PushNelson McCormick
Director
1 film together · 5.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Prom NightGreg McLean
Director
1 film together · 4.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The DarknessSteven E. de Souza
Director
1 film together · 4.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Street FighterBobby Roth
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Good MenSix 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
Mulan
as Mulan (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
Mulan
as Mulan (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
Mulan
as Mulan (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Ralph Breaks the Internet
as Mulan (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Mulan
as Mulan (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. Ming-Na Wen 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
31 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
9 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
Mulan
as Mulan (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Ralph Breaks the Internet
as Mulan (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Mulan
as Mulan (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Prom Night
as Dr. Elisha Crowe
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Mulan
as Mulan (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Karate Kid: Legends
as Dr. Fong
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Mulan II
as Mulan (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Mulan
as Mulan (voice)
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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