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TADANOBU ASANO ( as Hattori, the Ronin )
Tadanobu Asano is one of Japan's most popular young stars. He can currently be seen in Cannes 2003 competition entry BRIGHT FUTURE (dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa) and Thai director Pen-Ek Ratanaruang's LAST LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE (Venice 2003, Upstream).
Asano is perhaps best known to international audiences for his performances in Takashi Miike's ICHI THE KILLER, Katsuhito Ishii's SHARK SKIN MAN AND PEACH HIP GIRL and Nagisa Oshima's TABOO, in which he co-starred with "Beat" Takeshi Kitano.
His other credits include Hidenori Sugimori's WOMAN OF WATER (2002 Golden Alexander winner at the Thessaloniki Film Festival), Shinji Soomai's KAZA-HANA, Christopher Doyle's AWAY WITH WORDS, Hirokazu Koreeda's Cannes 2001 competition entry DISTANCE and 1995's MABOROSI (1996 Golden Osella Award at the Venice Film Festival), Shinya Tsukamoto's GEMINI, Shunji Iwai's PiCNiC (1996 Berliner Zeitung Reader's Award at the Berlin Film Festival) and four films by Sogo Ishii -- DEAD END RUN, ELECTRIC DRAGON 80000V, GOJOE and LABYRINTH OF DREAMS.
Asano began his career in Joji Matsuoka's 1990 film SWIMMING UPSTREAM. A few films later, Asano received a breakthrough starring role in Shinji Aoyama's 1996 crime drama HELPLESS.
Born in 1973 in Yokohama, Asano is also a talented illustrator and an occasional composer/guitarist. |
