Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#6973
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Richard Ng Man-Tat represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 37 years in, and Richard is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Richard Ng Man-Tat appears in 15 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Richard. True and False Monkey King 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, transformation, screen presence. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, war, science fiction. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Stephen Chow, Lee Lik-Chi, Jeffrey Lau Chun-Wai and others, Richard Ng Man-Tat 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.
True and False Monkey King (2021) · The Wandering Earth: Beyond 2020 Special Edition (2020) as 韩子昂 · A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella (1995) as Piggy
Career snapshot
Ranked #6973 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
15
1987–2024
Career length
37 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
10.0
True and False Monkey King
Average Nutevio score
6.9
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
10.0
True and False Monkey King
Most frequent director
Jeffrey Lau Chun-Wai
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Jeffrey Lau Chun-Wai
Most common genre
Action
10 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
7.0
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
7.1
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
1990s
7.4 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. The God of Cookery, A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora's Box, A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
7.4
Across 5 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
7.4
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1980s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. God of Gamblers, Miracles: The Canton Godfather, A Better Tomorrow II.
Most productive era
1990s
5 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 | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.22 films | 7.54 films | — | 6.61 film | — |
| Action | 7.13 films | 7.43 films | 6.72 films | 6.61 film | 10.01 film |
| Thriller | 7.11 film | — | — | — | — |
| Comedy | 7.22 films | 7.45 films | 6.72 films | — | — |
| Crime | 7.12 films | 7.01 film | — | — | — |
| Romance | — | 7.62 films | — | — | 6.31 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Wong Ching Kwok.
First Nutevio masterpiece
2020The Wandering Earth: Beyond 2020 Special Edition
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
2021True and False Monkey King
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.
Most recent film
2024Mutant
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.
15 of 15 films
as Piggy
Directed by Jeffrey Lau Chun-Wai
as Piggy
Directed by Jeffrey Lau Chun-Wai
as Pao Yau Wai
Directed by Wong Jing
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
True and False Monkey King
True and False Monkey King (2021)
Performance score9.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. The role gives Richard Ng Man-Tat a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
韩子昂
The Wandering Earth: Beyond 2020 Special Edition (2020)
Performance score8.9
The Wandering Earth: Beyond 2020 Special Edition asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. 韩子昂 is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Piggy
A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella (1995)
Performance score8.0
A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Piggy is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Piggy
A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora's Box (1995)
Performance score7.8
A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora's Box asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Piggy 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. True and False Monkey King is the clearest statement of what Richard Ng Man-Tat does — accessible, 0 minutes, and rated 10.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Richard 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.
Hail the Judge (1994)
A deliberate change of key after True and False Monkey King — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella (1995)
Keeps the comedy register of Hail the Judge but asks for a colder reading of it.
A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora's Box (1995)
Same director as A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
The Wandering Earth: Beyond 2020 Special Edition (2020)
A deliberate change of key after A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora's Box — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Wong Jing
Director
2 films together
Notably Hail the Judge
Jeffrey Lau Chun-Wai
Director
2 films together
Notably A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella
John Woo
Director
1 film together
Notably A Better Tomorrow II
Jackie Chan
Director
1 film together
Notably Miracles: The Canton Godfather
Lee Lik-Chi
Director
1 film together
Notably The God of Cookery
Stephen Chow
Director
1 film together
Notably Shaolin Soccer
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Jeffrey Lau Chun-Wai
Director
2 films together · 7.6 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: CinderellaWong Jing
Director
2 films together · 7.3 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Hail the JudgeStephen Chow
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Shaolin SoccerLee Lik-Chi
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The God of CookeryJackie Chan
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Miracles: The Canton GodfatherJohn Woo
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Better Tomorrow IISix 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
The Wandering Earth: Beyond 2020 Special Edition
as 韩子昂
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella
as Piggy
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
True and False Monkey King
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Miracles: The Canton Godfather
as Chen Wah's Man
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
True and False Monkey King
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. Richard Ng Man-Tat 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
37 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
10 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
True and False Monkey King
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
True and False Monkey King
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora's Box
as Piggy
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Fight Back to School
as Tso Tat Wah
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
True and False Monkey King
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Kung Fu Dunk
as Master Wu
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Miracles: The Canton Godfather
as Chen Wah's Man
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Shaolin Soccer
as Fung
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
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Reference
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