Tadanobu Asano

, better known by his stage name , is a Japanese actor. He is known for his roles as Dragon Eye Morrison in Electric Dragon 80.000 V, Kakihara in Ichi the Killer, Mamoru Arita in Bright Future, Hattori Genosuke in Zatoichi, Kenji in Last Life in the Universe, A man in Survive Style 5+, Ayano in The Taste of Tea, Temujin in Mongol, Captain Yugi Nagata in Battleship, Lord Kira Yoshinaka in 47 Ronin and Hogun in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, based on the Marvel Comics character. In 2016, he appeared as the Interpreter in Martin Scorsese's Silence. Three years later, he portrayed Rear Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi in Roland Emmerich's Midway (2019). He portrayed the thunder god Raiden in the 2021 film Mortal Kombat. Early life Asano was born in the Honmoku area, Yokohama, to artist and mother Junko (順子). His maternal grandfather was Willard Overing, a U.S. citizen of Norwegian ancestry, whom Asano never met. Asano has an older brother, Kujun Satō, born in 1971, who is a musician and a partner in Anore Inc. (now Adonis A), a talent agency Asano and their father Yukihisa Satō founded. Career Asano's father, an actors' agent, suggested he take on his first acting role in the TV show Kinpachi Sensei at the age of 16. His film debut was in the 1990 Swimming Upstream (Bataashi Kingyo), though his first major critical success was in Shunji Iwai's Fried Dragon Fish (1993). His first critical success internationally was Hirokazu Kore-eda's Maboroshi no Hikari (1995), in which he played a man who inexplicably throws himself in front of a train, widowing his wife and orphaning his infant son. He also worked with Kore-eda in the pseudo-documentary Distance in 2001. His best known works internationally are the samurai films Gohatto (aka Taboo, 1999) and Zatoichi (2003), as well as the critically acclaimed Bright Future. Asano acted in Katsuhito Ishii's 2003 film The Taste of Tea, which premiered at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. He appeared as the lead actor in Last Life in the Universe (2003) by Thai director Pen-Ek Ratanaruang and starred in Ratanaruang's 2006 follow-up film, Invisible Waves. In 2007, he starred as the young Genghis Khan in Sergei Bodrov's Oscar-nominated film Mongol. In Villon's Wife (2009), he played the part of an alcoholic writer, stating that, since he doesn't drink alcohol, he based his performance on people he knows.