Ken Watanabe
☼ Born on 21 December 1959, in Uonuma, Japan
BiographyKen Watanabe was born on October 21, 1959 in Uonuma, Japan. Both of his parents were teachers: his mother taught general education and his dad taught calligraphy. He became interested in acting at the age of 24, when a director of England's National Theater Company, where he was studying, told him that acting was his special gift. In 1978, he moved to Tokyo to pursue acting. He drew the attention of the critics when Yukio Ninagawa, a famous Japanese director, chose him for the lead role in one of his plays, even though Ken was still an acting student. He made his first TV appearance in 1982. His big career breakthrough came when he was chosen to play the lead in the Japanese national TV drama series called "Dokugan ryu Masamune". He played a samurai leader hero, making him a household name in Japan. In 1989, he collapsed while filming a movie in Canada due to leukemia. He made a miraculous comeback & co-starred with Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai (2003), which pushed him to the center stage of Hollywood.
Ken has a daughter, model, actress, & singer Anne Watanabe, & a son. He's an avid fan of Hanshin Tigers (Japanese professional baseball team) & Kobe Steel rugby team. He loves noodles.
In the role of actor
The Creator (02/10/2023)
A rogue soldier escorts an advanced AI child in The Creator. The West has gone to war against advanced AI following the destination of an atomic bomb in Las Angeles. Joshua Taylor (John David Washington) worked as an undercover agent in New Asia, where ended up marrying Maya Fey-Taylor (Gemma Chan), who has a connection […]
Godzilla: King of the Monsters (02/06/2019)
Humanity is threatened by the emergence of titans in Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Five years after the mythical beast Godzilla helped stop the threat of the MUTOs, the crypto-zoological organization Monarch is under government scrutiny for keeping the truth about titans secret from the world. However, when ecoterrorist Alan Jonah (Charles Dance) kidnaps paleobiologist […]
Pokemon Detective Pikachu (12/05/2019)
A young man enlists the help of a talking Pikachu to find out what happened to his father in Pokemon Detective Pikachu. Tim Goodman (Justice Smith) is an insurance salesman, with former dreams of being a Pokemon trainer, who learns that his estranged father Harry has apparently died in a car crash. Returning to his […]
Godzilla (2014) (17/05/2014)
Following his 2010 debut feature Monsters, director Gareth Edwards moves on to the greatest monster of all, with this new reboot of Godzilla. Following the meltdown of the Janjira Nuclear Plant near Tokyo, plant supervisor Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) becomes paranoid that the meltdown was created by something other than an earthquake, as claimed by […]
Inception (18/07/2010)
Christopher Nolan has developed into one of my favourite directors and while his work on the Batman films have made him popular, I always like the other projects he does on the side. Inception is a very interesting science fiction/action film about the world of dreams and the difference between fantasy and reality. It’s a bit […]