Ken Watanabe is a 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 Moritsugu in The
Last Samurai, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Among other awards, he has won the Japan Academy Prize for Best Actor twice, in 2007 for Memories
of Tomorrow and in 2010 for Shizumanu Taiyō.
He is also known for his roles in director Christopher Nolan's Hollywood films Batman
Begins and Inception.
In 2014, he starred in the reboot of Godzilla, and lent his voice to the fourth installment
of the Transformers franchise, Transformers: Age of Extinction.
Early life Watanabe was born in Koide, Niigata.
His mother was a school teacher and his father taught calligraphy.
Due to a number of relocations for his parents' work, he spent his childhood in the villages
of Irihirose and Sumon, both now part of the city of Uonuma, and in Takada, now part of
the city of Jōetsu.
He attended Niigata Prefectural Koide High School, where he was a member of the concert
band club, playing trumpet, which he had played since childhood.
After graduation from high school, in 1978 he aimed to enter Musashino Academia Musicae,
a conservatory in Tokyo.
However, he had never received a formal musical education, and because his father had collapsed
when Ken was in junior high school and was unable to work there was difficulty in finding
the money for tuition.
In part because of these problems, Watanabe gave up entering the conservatory.
Career Japanese roles
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, 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 Dokuganryu Masamune
the 50-episode NHK drama.
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
1991 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 theatre group where he had his start and joined the K-Dash agency.
The film Sennen no Koi earned him another Japanese Academy Award nomination.
In 2006, he won Best Lead Actor at the Japanese Academy Awards for his role in Memories of
Tomorrow, in which he played a patient with Alzheimer's Disease.
International films Watanabe was introduced to most Western audiences
when he was cast in the 2003 film The Last Samurai by prominent Japanese film producer
Yoko Narahashi.
His performance as Katsumoto earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting
Actor.
Watanabe appeared in the 2005 film Memoirs of a Geisha, playing Chairman Iwamura.
That same year, he also played Ra's al Ghul's decoy in Christopher Nolan's Batman film reboot,
Batman Begins.
In 2006, he starred in Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima, playing Tadamichi Kuribayashi.
He has voiced Ra's al Ghul's decoy in the Batman Begins video game.
He has filmed advertisements for American Express, Yakult, and NTT DoCoMo.
In 2004, he was featured in People Magazine 's 50 Most Beautiful People edition.
In 2009, he appeared in The Vampire's Assistant.
In 2010, he co-starred in Inception, where he stars as Saito, a mark-turned-benefactor
businessman of the film's heist team.
In 2014, he starred in the Hollywood blockbusters Godzilla and Transformers: Age of Extinction.
Personal life In 1983, Watanabe married his first wife,
Yumiko.
In March 2005, following two years of arbitration, he and Yumiko were divorced.
He got to know Kaho Minami when they were acting together in a suspense drama for TV
Tokyo.
Around the time of his divorce the two began seriously dating, and were married on December
3 of the same year.
The couple's relationship was initially kept out of the mass media.
It was not until an "unidentified guest" accompanying Watanabe at a New York premiere of his film
Sayuri who is seen in an Associated Press photo was found to be Minami that their marriage
was publicly announced.
Watanabe formally adopted Minami's son from her previous marriage to director Hitonari
Tsuji, and for a time the three of them lived in Los Angeles.
In order to increase the amount of time the family could spend together, considering Ken's
work requiring him to travel so much, they later returned to Japan.
Initially Minami and Ken did not hold any wedding ceremony, but in 2010, marking their
fifth anniversary, they announced that they had held a ceremony in Los Angeles.
Watanabe has two biological children and an adopted son.
His oldest son, Dai Watanabe is an actor, and his daughter Anne Watanabe is also an
actress and fashion model.
In August 2008, Dai had his first child, making Ken a grandfather at the age of 48.
As of 2014, Watanabe has two grandchildren.
In 1989 Watanabe was diagnosed with bone marrow leukemia, but he later recovered.
In 2006 Watanabe revealed in his autobiography Dare?
- Who Am I? that he has hepatitis C. At a press conference held 23 May 2006 in Tokyo's
Ginza district, he said he was in good condition but was still undergoing treatment.
On March 13, 2011, he launched a YouTube page to raise awareness about the 2011 Tōhoku
earthquake and tsunami and invited celebrities to add their videos.
In his video in English, he made a call to action to support the victims and to raise
funds in the relief effort.
In conjunction, he has created his own website for the cause.
Filmography Video games
Stage Britannicus henso
Shitaya mannencho monogatari Fuyu no raion
Pajaze Platonof
Kafun netsu Pizarro
Hamlet Hamlet no gakuya -anten
Towa part1-kanojo Towa part2-kanojo to kare
Awards and nominations References
External links Ken Watanabe at the Internet Movie Database
USA Today Interview About.com Interview
Watanabe Ken's JMDb Listing Ken Watanabe profile on Hoga Central