Tatsuya Nakadai
- Actor
- Soundtrack
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 The Thick-Walled Room (1956). 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 Toshir� 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: The Shadow Warrior (1980) and Ran (1985) are among the most indelible in the
director's oeuvre.