Ken Watanabe

Ken Watanabe,born October 21, 1959 is a Academy Award-nominated Japanese stage, film, and television actor. To English-speaking audiences he is known for playing tragic hero characters, such as General Tadamichi Kuribayashi in Letters from Iwo Jima and Lord Katsumoto in The Last Samurai.

Born Ken Watanabe in Koide, Niigata prefecture, his mother was a school teacher and his father taught calligraphy.

After graduating from high school in 1978, Watanabe moved to Tokyo to begin his acting career, getting his big break with the Tokyo-based theater troupe En. While with the troupe, he was cast as the hero in the play Shimodani Mannencho Monogatari, under Yukio Ninagawa’s direction. The role attracted critical and popular notice.

In 1982, he made his first TV appearance in Michinaru Hanran (Unknown Rebellion), and his first appearance on TV as a samurai in Mibu no koiuta. He made his feature-film debut in 1984 with MacArthur’s Children.

Watanabe is mostly known in Japan for playing samurai, as in the 1987 Dokuganruu Masamune (One eyed dragon, Masamune) the 50-episode NHK drama for which he is now best known. He played the lead character, Matsudaira Kurō, in the television jidaigeki Gokenin Zankurō, which ran for several seasons. He has gone on to earn acclaim in such historical dramas as Oda Nobunaga, Chushingura, and the movie Bakumatsu Junjo Den.

In 1989, while filming Haruki Kadokawa’s Heaven and Earth, Watanabe was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia. He returned to acting while simultaneously undergoing chemotherapy treatments, but in 1994 suffered a relapse.

As his health improved his career picked back up. He co-starred with Koji Yakusho in the 1998 Kizuna, for which he was nominated for the Japanese Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

In 2002, he quit the En (Engeki-Shudan En) theater group where he had his start and joined the K-Dash agency. The film Sennen no Koi (Thousand-year Love, based on The Tale of Genji) earned him another Japanese Academy Award nomination.

In 2006, he finally won Best Lead Actor at the Japanese Academy Awards for his role in Memories of tomorrow (Ashita no Kioku), where he played a patient with Alzheimer’s Disease.

Watanabe was introduced to most Western audiences with the 2003 film The Last Samurai for which his performance as Katsumoto in earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Watanabe also appeared in the 2005 films Batman Begins and Memoirs of a Geisha, where he played The Chairman. In 2006 he starred in Clint Eastwood’s film Letters from Iwo Jima. He has also filmed ads for American Express and Yakult and in 2004, he was featured in People Magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People edition.

In 2001 he announced at a press conference that his ¥170 million (1.4 million USD, 2001) home had been repossessed and that he was heavily in debt. Watanabe had ignored his finances, leaving them entirely to his wife.

Ken is divorced from his ex-wife, Yumiko, with whom he has two children: Ann Watanabe, a 20 year-old model, and Dai, a 23 year-old actor.

On December 3, 2005, he married actress Kaho Minami.