ACTOR

Ken Watanabe

1959 - Today

Photo of Ken Watanabe

Icon of person Ken Watanabe

Ken Watanabe (渡辺 謙, Watanabe Ken, born October 21, 1959) is a Japanese actor. To English-speaking audiences, he is known for playing tragic hero characters, such as General Tadamichi Kuribayashi in Letters from Iwo Jima and Lord Katsumoto Moritsugu in The Last Samurai, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Among other awards, he has won the Japan Academy Film Prize for Best Actor twice, in 2007 for Memories of Tomorrow and in 2010 for Shizumanu Taiyō. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Ken Watanabe has received more than 5,880,723 page views. His biography is available in 49 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 48 in 2019). Ken Watanabe is the 544th most popular actor (down from 472nd in 2019), the 159th most popular biography from Japan (down from 123rd in 2019) and the 6th most popular Japanese Actor.

Ken Watanabe is most famous for his role as the King of Siam in the musical "The King and I" in the 1990s.

Memorability Metrics

  • 5.9M

    Page Views (PV)

  • 62.65

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 49

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 5.72

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 3.60

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Page views of Ken Watanabes by language

Over the past year Ken Watanabe has had the most page views in the with 932,591 views, followed by Japanese (671,158), and German (91,788). In terms of yearly growth of page views the top 3 wikpedia editions are Sundanese (133.77%), Egyptian Arabic (115.10%), and Malayalam (78.70%)

Among ACTORS

Among actors, Ken Watanabe ranks 544 out of 13,578. Before him are Eleonora Duse, Tippi Hedren, Karlheinz Böhm, Brian Cox, Mel Ferrer, and Nǃxau ǂToma. After him are Maria Schell, Raul Julia, Louise Fletcher, Mae West, Nastassja Kinski, and Jessica Tandy.

Most Popular Actors in Wikipedia

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1959, Ken Watanabe ranks 23. Before him are Bryan Adams, Magic Johnson, Bernd Schuster, Mauricio Macri, Ali Bongo Ondimba, and Sean Bean. After him are János Áder, Mike Pence, Benny Gantz, Milorad Dodik, Robert Knepper, and John McEnroe.

Others Born in 1959

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In Japan

Among people born in Japan, Ken Watanabe ranks 159 out of 6,245. Before him are Kenzō Takada (1939), Kazuyoshi Miura (1967), Junko Tabei (1939), Kobayashi Issa (1763), Tomoyuki Yamashita (1885), and Iwane Matsui (1878). After him are Shoko Asahara (1955), Osamu Yamaji (1929), Nobusuke Kishi (1896), Emperor Ōjin (210), Antonio Inoki (1943), and Shohei Imamura (1926).

Others born in Japan

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Among ACTORS In Japan

Among actors born in Japan, Ken Watanabe ranks 6. Before him are Olivia de Havilland (1916), Liv Ullmann (1938), Mako (1933), Sonny Chiba (1939), and Joan Fontaine (1917). After him are Takashi Shimura (1905), Setsuko Hara (1920), Hiroyuki Sanada (1960), Tatsuya Nakadai (1932), Sessue Hayakawa (1886), and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (1950).

Japanese born Actors

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Television and Movie Roles

Inception
Saito
Cobb, a skilled thief who commits corporate espionage by infiltrating the subconscious of his targets is offered a chance to regain his old life as payment for a task considered to be impossible: "inception", the implantation of another person's idea into a target's subconscious.
Jul 15o 20108.367 / 10
The Last Samurai
Moritsugu Katsumoto
Nathan Algren is an American hired to instruct the Japanese army in the ways of modern warfare, which finds him learning to respect the samurai and the honorable principles that rule them. Pressed to destroy the samurai's way of life in the name of modernization and open trade, Algren decides to become an ultimate warrior himself and to fight for their right to exist.
Dec 5o 20037.577 / 10
Letters from Iwo Jima
General Tadamichi Kuribayashi
The story of the battle of Iwo Jima between the United States and Imperial Japan during World War II, as told from the perspective of the Japanese who fought it.
Dec 19o 20067.463 / 10