Tatsuya Nakadai

Date of Birth: 13 December 1932

Birth Name: Motohisa Nakadai

Nickname: Moya The Snake

Height: 5′ 11″ (1.80 m)

Mini Biography:

Japanese leading man, an important star and one of the handful of Japanese actors well known outside Japan. Nakadai was a tall handsome clerk in a Tokyo shop when director Masaki Kobayashi encountered him and cast him in Kabe atsuki heya (1953). Nakadai was subsequently cast in the lead role in Kobayashi’s monumental trilogy ‘Ningen no joken’ and became a star whose international acclaim rivaled that of countryman Toshirô Mifune. Like Mifune, Nakadai worked frequently with director Akira Kurosawa and indeed more or less replaced Mifune as Kurosawa’s principal leading man after the well-known falling out between Mifune and Kurosawa. His appearances for Kurosawa in Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985) are among the most indelible in the director’s oeuvre.

Spouse:

Tomoe Ryu (1957 – 27 June 1996) (her death)

Trivia:

He played characters of a very different age from his own through his career. In Seppuku (1962), he played a samurai in his 50s while he was 33. In Kaidan (1964), he played a 18-year-old woodcutter when he himself was 36. In Ran (1985) he played a nearly 80-year-old emperor when he was 56.
Though a frequent on-screen rival, he was good friends with Toshirô Mifune.

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