Hiroyuki Sanada, first-time Emmy nominee for his nuanced lead performance as the strategic and cunning Lord Toranaga in “Shōgun,” is one of the most celebrated, prolific screen actors in the world.
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Age when Sanada, now 63, began acting in Japanese films, appearing in “Game of Chance” (1966) as the son of a character played by martial arts star Sonny Chiba, a role model for Sanada’s subsequent career in …
1980s
… Japanese and Hong Kong action movies, in which Sanada starred while simultaneously building a reputation as a quietly magnetic character actor in Japanese movies and TV dramas.
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Number of Japanese Academy Award nominations Sanada had received by age 35.
1998
Sanada expanded his international profile by playing a professor researching a creepy VHS tape in the horror film sensation “Ringu,” later remade in the U.S. as “The Ring.”
2002
Year Sanada became an honorary Member of the Order of the British Empire after playing the Fool in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of “King Lear.”
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The “Shōgun” nominations haul leads the Emmy pack. But Sanada is accustomed to big awards season numbers, after 2002’s “The Twilight Samurai” …
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… received a dozen Japanese Academy Awards, including lead actor for Sanada’s moving performance as an impoverished widower struggling with his samurai duties.
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post-“Twilight Samurai” Hollywood movies featuring Sanada have grossed at least $400 million worldwide, including “The Last Samurai” and “John Wick: Chapter 4.”
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Sanada is the second revered Japanese actor to score an Emmy nomination as Lord Toranaga in “Shōgun.” Toshiro Mifune was nominated for the 1980 NBC miniseries.
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But Sanada’s nearly six-decade career more closely resembles that of Jodie Foster, 61, a fellow child actor, college graduate and action star who also won a lead acting award as part of a juggernaut (“The Silence of the Lambs”) and …
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… like Sanada, is favored to win in September on a first acting Emmy nomination (as limited series lead, “True Detective: Night Country”).
