Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#5296
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Tia Carrere represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 34 years in, and Tia is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Tia Carrere appears in 11 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Tia. Lilo & Stitch is the clearest case: a film rated 7.6 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 science fiction, comedy, family. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Dean Fleischer Camp, Jay Chandrasekhar, Tim Maltby and others, Tia Carrere 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.
Lilo & Stitch (2002) as Nani (voice) · Lilo & Stitch (2025) as Mrs. Kekoa · True Lies (1994) as Juno
Career snapshot
Ranked #5296 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
11
1991–2025
Career length
34 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.6
Lilo & Stitch
Average Nutevio score
6.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.6
Lilo & Stitch
Most frequent director
Dean Fleischer Camp
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Dean Fleischer Camp
Most common genre
Comedy
9 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
6.9
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
6.7
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
6.9 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. Aloha Scooby-Doo!, Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch, Stitch! The Movie — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.9
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.9
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. True Lies, Wayne's World 2, Rising Sun.
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 | 1990s | 2000s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.31 film | — | — |
| Action | 6.73 films | — | — |
| Thriller | 6.82 films | — | — |
| Comedy | 6.53 films | 6.94 films | 6.72 films |
| Crime | 6.51 film | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Minako.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2002Lilo & Stitch
7.6 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
2025Lilo & Stitch
The current state of the argument, as Mrs. Kekoa.
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 Nani (voice)
Directed by Dean DeBlois
as Juno
Directed by James Cameron
as Mrs. Kekoa
Directed by Dean Fleischer Camp
as Snookie / Local Woman #1 (voice)
Directed by Tim Maltby
as Nani (voice)
Directed by Unknown
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
Nani (voice)
Lilo & Stitch (2002)
Performance score7.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Nani (voice) gives Tia Carrere a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Juno
True Lies (1994)
Performance score7.3
True Lies asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Juno is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Mrs. Kekoa
Lilo & Stitch (2025)
Performance score7.1
Lilo & Stitch asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mrs. Kekoa is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Snookie / Local Woman #1 (voice)
Aloha Scooby-Doo! (2005)
Performance score7.1
Aloha Scooby-Doo! asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Snookie / Local Woman #1 (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 Nani (voice)
Start here. Lilo & Stitch is the clearest statement of what Tia Carrere does — accessible, 85 minutes, and rated 7.6 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Tia 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.
True Lies (1994)
A deliberate change of key after Lilo & Stitch — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Aloha Scooby-Doo! (2005)
A deliberate change of key after True Lies — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch (2005)
Keeps the comedy register of Aloha Scooby-Doo! but asks for a colder reading of it.
Lilo & Stitch (2025)
Keeps the science fiction register of Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Mark L. Lester
Director
1 film together
Notably Showdown in Little Tokyo
Penelope Spheeris
Director
1 film together
Notably Wayne's World
Philip Kaufman
Director
1 film together
Notably Rising Sun
Stephen Surjik
Director
1 film together
Notably Wayne's World 2
James Cameron
Director
1 film together
Notably True Lies
Dean DeBlois
Director
1 film together
Notably Lilo & Stitch
Bobs Gannaway
Director
1 film together
Notably Stitch! The Movie
Tim Maltby
Director
1 film together
Notably Aloha Scooby-Doo!
Jay Chandrasekhar
Director
1 film together
Notably Easter Sunday
Dean Fleischer Camp
Director
1 film together
Notably Lilo & Stitch
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Dean DeBlois
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Lilo & StitchDean Fleischer Camp
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Lilo & StitchJames Cameron
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
True LiesTim Maltby
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Aloha Scooby-Doo!Penelope Spheeris
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Wayne's WorldBobs Gannaway
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Stitch! The MovieMark L. Lester
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Showdown in Little TokyoPhilip Kaufman
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Rising SunStephen Surjik
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Wayne's World 2Jay Chandrasekhar
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Easter SundaySix 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
True Lies
as Juno
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Aloha Scooby-Doo!
as Snookie / Local Woman #1 (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
Lilo & Stitch
as Nani (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Lilo & Stitch
as Mrs. Kekoa
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Lilo & Stitch
as Nani (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. Tia Carrere 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
34 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
9 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
Aloha Scooby-Doo!
as Snookie / Local Woman #1 (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
True Lies
as Juno
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Aloha Scooby-Doo!
as Snookie / Local Woman #1 (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Aloha Scooby-Doo!
as Snookie / Local Woman #1 (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
True Lies
as Juno
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Rising Sun
as Jingo Asakuma
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Aloha Scooby-Doo!
as Snookie / Local Woman #1 (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Easter Sunday
as Tita Teresa
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Christian Bale
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Have your say
Community
Which Tia Carrere performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
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Reference
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