Watanabe was catapulted into the global spotlight with his Golden Globe and Oscar-nominated role in Edward Zwick’s The Last Samurai (2003), and has remained there through a varied career that has also encompassed his Tony Award-nominated turn on Broadway in The King and I (2000), making him perhaps the most recognizable Japanese actor around the world. He has had starring roles in Hollywood hits Memoirs of a Geisha (2005), Batman Begins (2005), Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), Inception (2010), Godzilla (2014), Godzilla: King of Monsters (2019) and Detective Pikachu (2019). He has won the Japan Academy Award for Best Actor for Memories of Tomorrow (2007) and The Unbroken (2009), among many other honors. Watanabe is starring in the forthcoming Amazon series Tokyo Vice, based on the nonfiction book by Jake Adelstein.
→Stay tuned for a video greeting from CUT ABOVE Award recipients Koichi Sato and Ken Watanabe.