Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#8297
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Oh Dal-su 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.
Oh Dal-su appears in 11 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Oh. Oldboy is the clearest case: a film rated 8.4 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 drama, history, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Chang Hang-jun, Ha Jung-woo, Park Chan-wook and others, Oh Dal-su 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.
Oldboy (2003) as Park Cheol-woong · Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds (2017) as Prosecutor · No Other Choice (2025) as Detective #1
Career snapshot
Ranked #8297 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
11
2003–2026
Career length
23 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.4
Oldboy
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.2
Oldboy
Most frequent director
Park Chan-wook
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Park Chan-wook
Most common genre
Comedy
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 57m
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
8.4 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Oldboy — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
8.4
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
8.2
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. Oldboy.
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 | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 7.62 films | 6.33 films |
| Action | — | 7.71 film | 6.12 films |
| Thriller | 8.41 film | 7.71 film | 7.51 film |
| Comedy | — | 7.41 film | 5.36 films |
| Crime | — | — | 6.63 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
2003Oldboy
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Park Cheol-woong. 8.4 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
The current state of the argument, as Hong-do.
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.
11 of 11 films
as Park Cheol-woong
Directed by Park Chan-wook
as Eui-sik
Directed by Lee Hwan-kyung
as Prosecutor
Directed by Kim Yong-hwa
as Oh Jae-pyeong
Directed by Ryoo Seung-wan
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
Park Cheol-woong
Oldboy (2003)
Performance score8.3
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Park Cheol-woong gives Oh Dal-su a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Eui-sik
Best Friend (2020)
Performance score7.8
Best Friend asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Eui-sik is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Prosecutor
Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds (2017)
Performance score7.5
Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Prosecutor is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
So Yang-ho
Miracle in Cell No. 7 (2013)
Performance score7.5
Miracle in Cell No. 7 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. So Yang-ho 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 Park Cheol-woong
Start here. Oldboy is the clearest statement of what Oh Dal-su does — accessible, 120 minutes, and rated 8.4 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Oh 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.
Miracle in Cell No. 7 (2013)
A deliberate change of key after Oldboy — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds (2017)
Keeps the drama register of Miracle in Cell No. 7 but asks for a colder reading of it.
Best Friend (2020)
Keeps the drama register of Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds but asks for a colder reading of it.
I, the Executioner (2024)
Keeps the comedy register of Best Friend but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Lee Hwan-kyung
Director
2 films together
Notably Best Friend
Park Chan-wook
Director
2 films together
Notably Oldboy
Kim Yong-hwa
Director
1 film together
Notably Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds
Kim Bong-han
Director
1 film together
Notably The Wild
Ryoo Seung-wan
Director
1 film together
Notably I, the Executioner
Ha Jung-woo
Director
1 film together
Notably The People Upstairs
Chang Hang-jun
Director
1 film together
Notably The King's Warden
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Park Chan-wook
Director
2 films together · 8.0 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
OldboyLee Hwan-kyung
Director
2 films together · 7.5 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Best FriendKim Yong-hwa
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Along with the Gods: The Two WorldsChang Hang-jun
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The King's WardenRyoo Seung-wan
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
I, the ExecutionerHa Jung-woo
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The People UpstairsKim Bong-han
Director
1 film together · 5.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The WildSix 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
Oldboy
as Park Cheol-woong
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
The King's Warden
as Elder Yoon
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Oldboy
as Park Cheol-woong
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Oldboy
as Park Cheol-woong
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Oldboy
as Park Cheol-woong
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. Oh Dal-su 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
23 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
7 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
Oldboy
as Park Cheol-woong
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Oldboy
as Park Cheol-woong
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The King's Warden
as Elder Yoon
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Oldboy
as Park Cheol-woong
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds
as Prosecutor
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds
as Prosecutor
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Miracle in Cell No. 7
as So Yang-ho
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Oldboy
as Park Cheol-woong
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
David Krumholtz
Built a career in the same territory: action and adventure
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Robert Downey Jr.
Built a career in the same territory: drama and history
Have your say
Community
Which Oh Dal-su performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
Join the conversation
Reference
Continue exploring
Trending performers
Directors they work with
Collections to read next
