ACTOR

Ken Watanabe

1959 - Today

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Ken Watanabe (渡辺 謙, Watanabe Ken; born October 21, 1959) is a Japanese actor. He is best 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, Watanabe has won the Japan Academy Film Prize for Best Actor twice, in 2007 for Memories of Tomorrow and in 2010 for The Unbroken. He is also known for his roles in Christopher Nolan's films Batman Begins and Inception, as well as Memoirs of a Geisha, and Pokémon Detective Pikachu. Read more on Wikipedia

His biography is available in different languages on Wikipedia. Ken Watanabe is the 622nd most popular actor (down from 544th in 2019), the 189th most popular biography from Japan (down from 159th in 2019) and the 6th most popular Japanese Actor.

Ken Watanabe is most famous for his role as the King of Siam in the musical "The King and I" in the 1990s.

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Among ACTORS

Among actors, Ken Watanabe ranks 622 out of 13,578Before him are Thandie Newton, Jude Law, Laura Gemser, Danielle Darrieux, Brendan Gleeson, and Rex Harrison. After him are Joaquin Phoenix, Jeffrey Wright, Michèle Morgan, Ingrid Thulin, Dick Clark, and Faten Hamama.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1959, Ken Watanabe ranks 28Before him are Sting, Abdulla Yameen, Alberto Fernández, Gerhard Berger, Sean Bean, and Boris Nemtsov. After him are Michael Kors, Ahmet Davutoğlu, Luciano Spalletti, Robert Knepper, Vahagn Khachaturyan, and Maurizio Sarri.

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In Japan

Among people born in Japan, Ken Watanabe ranks 189 out of 6,245Before him are Okita Sōji (1842), Iwane Matsui (1878), Motoo Tatsuhara (1913), Yukio Hatoyama (1947), Emperor Ōjin (210), and Tomohiko Ikoma (1932). After him are Utamaro (1753), Yoshimatsu Oyama (null), Akio Morita (1921), Akira Kitaguchi (1935), Yasuhiro Nakasone (1918), and Hirokazu Ninomiya (1917).

Among ACTORS In Japan

Among actors born in Japan, Ken Watanabe ranks 6Before him are Olivia de Havilland (1916), Mako (1933), Liv Ullmann (1938), Joan Fontaine (1917), and Sonny Chiba (1939). After him are Hiroyuki Sanada (1960), Ken Takakura (1931), Takashi Shimura (1905), Victoria Principal (1950), Setsuko Hara (1920), and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (1950).