File:Ken_Watanabe_20220615.jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons
Ken Watanabe is a Japanese actor known for his roles in major films and international productions. He matters because he has become one of the most recognizable Japanese performers in global cinema, helping to bring Japanese talent to wider audiences worldwide.
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Person · Open Library
- Works
- 4
Top works
- Problem Cozumune Giris 101
- Masamune Kun No Revenge
- Người thông minh giải quyết vấn đề như thế nào?
- Problem solving 101
via Open Library + Wikidata
Film & TV
Acting · Uonuma, Niigata, Japan
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…
Known for
- Samurai Vengeance — Kinji Shinoda2026
- Kyotojin no Hisokana Tanoshimi Rouge: Keisho — 東雲朔太郎2026
- Kokuho — Hanjiro Hanai2025
- The Final Piece — Shigeyoshi Toumyo2025
- LA PANTHÈRE DE CARTIER2025
- Unbound — Tamema Okitsugu2025
- TRUE COLORS — Taichirou Tsujimura2025
- All Lives2024
- Kensuke's Kingdom — Kensuke (voice)2024
- The Creator — Harun2023
via TMDB
Music · MusicBrainz
- Type
- Person
- Gender
- Male
- Origin
- Japan
- Active from
- 1959
Discography
- 終りのない輪舞1987
via MusicBrainz · CC0
Listeners · Last.fm
- Listeners
- 913
- Total plays
- 13,268
Tags
<a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Ken+Watanabe">Read more on Last.fm</a>
Recent publications · Crossref
5 total works indexed
- Initial sequencing and analysis of the human genome
· 2001 · cited 18,520x
- A global reference for human genetic variation
· 2015 · cited 17,412x
- Global burden of 369 diseases and injuries in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019
· 2020 · cited 15,393x
- All-Atom Empirical Potential for Molecular Modeling and Dynamics Studies of Proteins
· 1998 · cited 13,285x
- Global, regional, and national incidence, prevalence, and years lived with disability for 354 diseases and injuries for 195 countries and territories, 1990–2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017
· 2018 · cited 10,814x
via Crossref · CC0
Wikidata facts
- Mass
- 80
- Official website
- www.kenwatanabe-official.com
- Image
- Ken Watanabe 20220615.jpg
- Height
- 184
Show 7 more facts
- Commons category
- Ken Watanabe
- date of birth
- 1959-10-21
- name in kana
- わたなべ けん
- name in native language
- 渡辺謙
- start of work period
- 1979-00-00
- social media followers
- 215901
- birth name
- Vatanabe Kenszaku
Sources (9)
via Wikidata · CC0
~11 min read
Article
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.
In 2014, he starred in the reboot Godzilla as Dr. Ishiro Serizawa, a role he reprised in the sequel, Godzilla: King of the Monsters. He lent his voice to the fourth and fifth installments of the Transformers franchise respectively, Transformers: Age of Extinction and Transformers: The Last Knight, as Decepticon-turned-Autobot Drift. In 2022, he starred in the HBO Max crime drama series Tokyo Vice.