
Acting
Oct 20, 1959
Uonuma, Niigata, Japan
Ken Watanabe
Acting
Biography
Ken Watanabe (born October 21, 1959) 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 blockbusters Batman Begins and Inception.
Feature Films (70)

Driven by tragedy, billionaire Bruce Wayne dedicates his life to uncovering and defeating the corruption that plagues his home, Gotham City. Unable to work within the system, he instead creates a new identity, a symbol of fear for the criminal underworld - The Batman.
Batman Begins

The story of the battle of Iwo Jima between the United States and Imperial Japan during World War II, as told from the perspective of the Japanese who fought it.
Letters from Iwo Jima

Nathan Algren is an American hired to instruct the Japanese army in the ways of modern warfare, which finds him learning to respect the samurai and the honorable principles that rule them. Pressed to destroy the samurai's way of life in the name of modernization and open trade, Algren decides to become an ultimate warrior himself and to fight for their right to exist.
The Last Samurai

In this humorous paean to the joys of food, a pair of truck drivers happen onto a decrepit roadside shop selling ramen noodles. The widowed owner, Tampopo, begs them to help her turn her establishment into a paragon of the "art of noodle-soup making". Interspersed are satirical vignettes about the importance of food to different aspects of human life.
Tampopo

When Darren Shan is taken to a circus that's chock-full of sideshow oddities, he meets a vampire and receives a life-changing bite on the neck.
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant

Cobb, a skilled thief who commits corporate espionage by infiltrating the subconscious of his targets is offered a chance to regain his old life as payment for a task considered to be impossible: "inception", the implantation of another person's idea into a target's subconscious.
Inception

An American man returns to a corrupt, Japanese-occupied Shanghai four months before Pearl Harbor and discovers his friend has been killed. While he unravels the mysteries of the death, he falls in love and discovers a much larger secret that his own government is hiding.
Shanghai

At the turn of the 20th Century amongst tension between China and Japan, a Japanese swindler in Shanghai plans to profit by selling weapons. He steals arms from the Japanese military and sells them to the rich Chinese.
T.R.Y.

Three bank robbers, who declare themselves to be Space Travelers, take six persons as hostages when they are surrounded by the police. Among the hostages, there is a terrorist with a hidden bomb. In order to escape, the robbers ask the hostages to pretend to be part of the gang. Surprisingly, the hostages soon enjoy doing so. On that strange day, the bank becomes a tropical paradise...
Space Travelers

Amid a future war between the human race and the forces of artificial intelligence, a hardened ex-special forces agent grieving the disappearance of his wife, is recruited to hunt down and kill the Creator, the elusive architect of advanced AI who has developed a mysterious weapon with the power to end the war—and mankind itself.
The Creator

An old swordsman, his former comrade and a young braggart are hired by prostitutes to track down bandits who mutilated one of the women.
Unforgiven
Television & Series (35)

Living in Ikebukuro — an area infamous for juvenile crime, 21-year-old Makoto Majima becomes associated with a youth gang called the G-Boys. A troubleshooter known for his cool headedness and ability to get things done, Makoto diffuses tense situations around Ikebukuro to keep his friends and others out of harm's way. However, the mysterious death of his girlfriend and an escalating gang turf war threaten to be more than Makoto can handle.
Ikebukuro West Gate Park

A locksmith who can open any kind of lock with his well-honed fingertip skills is caught up in a case in which his nephew is put in danger just because he played a role in exposing political bribery due to his special skills, and his love for his sister-in-law.
Kagi-shi

Eiryo Waga is well-known musician who has begun a rapid climb to stardom, but he must keep his terrible past a secret. One day someone who knows all about his past confronts him, and Waga kills him in order to protect the fame he has obtained. Unfortunately, as Waga is leaving the scene, he runs into Asami, a budding stage actress. An investigation team is established led by two detectives, but they have difficulty making any headway. Meanwhile, by coincidence Waga bumps into Asami again. She also has her own dark past, and soon they fall in love. But Waga is already engaged to Ayaka whose father is responsible for his rapid ascent to the top of the music world. It looks like Waga’s ambitions are about to confront reality. Based on Seicho Matsumoto’s famous work that was released in 1960-61, this drama illustrates the life of a man burdened with a heavy fate in a contemporary setting.









