Ken Watanabe

Personal Info

Know For

Acting

Gender

Male

Birthday

1959-10-21 (66 years old)

Place of Birth

Uonuma, Niigata, Japan

Ken Watanabe

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.

Acting

2005

Batman Begins

as Ra's al Ghul

2006

Letters from Iwo Jima

as General Tadamichi Kuribayashi

2003

The Last Samurai

as Moritsugu Katsumoto

1985

Tampopo

as Gun

2010

Inception

as Saito

2010

Shanghai

as Tanaka

2003

T.R.Y.

as Masanobu Azuma

2000

Space Travelers

as Sakamaki ("Crusher")

2023

The Creator

as Harun

2013

Unforgiven

as Jubee Kamata

2014

Godzilla

as Dr. Ishiro Serizawa

2006

Memories of Tomorrow

as Masayuki Saeki

2009

The Unbroken

as Hajime Onchi

2005

Year One in the North

as Komatsubara Hideaki

2012

Hayabusa: The Long Voyage Home

as Junichiro Kawaguchi

2007

Earth

as Narrator (voice)

2000

2001

Drowning Fish

as Miyota

2017

Dirty, Clean, & Inbetween

as Restaurant Patron

1984

MacArthur's Children

as Tetsuo Nakai

2017

2014

Snow Jack

as Reiji Kurata

2016

Rage

as Yohei Maki

2016

The Sea of Trees

as Takumi Nakamura

1992

2019

Godzilla: King of the Monsters

as Dr. Ishiro Serizawa

2019

Pokémon Detective Pikachu

as Lieutenant Hide Yoshida

2018

Isle of Dogs

as Head Surgeon (voice)

2018

Bel Canto

as Katsumi Hosokawa

2020

Fukushima 50

as Masao Yoshida

2017

2018

The King and I

as The King of Siam

2024

Kensuke's Kingdom

as Kensuke (voice)

1998

Bonds

as Detective Sako Akio

1997

1990

Baian the Assassin

as Dr. Baian

2005

2003

Another Battle/Conspiracy

as Fujimaki Hiroaki

2025

Kokuho

as Hanjiro

Production

1989

Harimao

as Producer

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