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 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: The Shadow Warrior (1980) and Ran (1985) are among the most indelible in the
director's oeuvre.