Ken Watanabe

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Nationality Japon
Birth 21 october 1959 (65 years) at Uonuma (Japon)

Ken Watanabe (渡辺謙, Watanabe Ken, born October 21, 1959) is a Japanese 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 as Decepticon turned Autobot Drift. He made his Broadway debut in April of 2015 in Lincoln Center Theater's revival production of The King and I in the title role (opposite Kelli O'Hara as Anna Leonowens). In 2015, Watanabe received his first Tony nomination for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical at the 69th Tony Awards for his role as The King. He is the first Japanese actor to be nominated in this category.

Biography

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 Jinsei 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 (born 1984) is an actor, and his daughter Anne Watanabe (born 1986) 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.