Ken Watanabe
Actor
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.
Filmography
Batman Begins
as Ra's al Ghul 2005
Godzilla
as Dr. Ishiro Serizawa 2014
Transformers: Age of Extinction
as Drift (voice) 2014
The Last Samurai
as Moritsugu Katsumoto 2003
Pokémon Detective Pikachu
as Lieutenant Hide Yoshida 2019
Transformers: The Last Knight
as Drift (voice) 2017
Godzilla: King of the Monsters
as Dr. Ishiro Serizawa 2019
Isle of Dogs
as Head Surgeon (voice) 2018
The Creator
as Harun 2023
Memoirs of a Geisha
as Chairman 2005
Letters from Iwo Jima
as General Tadamichi Kuribayashi 2006
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
as Mr. Tall 2009
The Sea of Trees
as Takumi Nakamura 2016
Tampopo
as Gun 1985
Earth
as Narrator (voice) 2007
7 Guardians of the Tomb
as Father 2018