Trading places: Cult action hero pivots to love
Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano has a huge following from action flicks such as Mortal Kombat and Shogun, but his latest film is more of a love story.
Cult Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano was at the recent Cannes Film Festival – trading on his global success and surprising audiences with his switch from action hero to romantic lead.
We first met for director Kateshi Kitano’s outstanding samurai film Zatoichi in Venice in 2003, then followed up in Cannes for several Japanese films, including The Taste of Tea (2004) directed by his regular collaborator, Katsuhito Ishii.
Internationally, the now 52-year-old actor has been acclaimed for Thor and Thor: Ragnarok, Mortal Kombat and television series Shogun, for which he won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Emmy.
Mortal Kombat II recently released to huge box-office success. Asano also starred in Ravens (2024), Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan (2007), appeared in Roland Emmerich’s Midway (2019) and has made many films with prominent Japanese directors including Hirokazu Kore-eda and Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who both had films in Cannes this year. Last year in Venice Asano co-starred with Kitano in the director’s film, Broken Rage.
When we meet in Cannes for the premiere of romantic Japanese film, All the Lovers in the Night, Asano is keen to talk about Australia where he has worked a lot – on the Gold Coast for the Thor films, in South Australia for Mortal Kombat and back on the Gold Coast again for its sequel. He loves Australia.
“It’s beautiful, beautiful,” he says, admitting he loves Australia more than the US. “I love the people, and the whole crew were fantastic. I want to go back as soon as possible. If there’s a part three of Mortal Kombat, I would be grateful to work there again. I didn’t think that Mortal Kombat would be this big of a hit.”
In the MK films he plays Lord Raiden, the eternal God of Thunder and protector of Earth realm, whose eyes glow as he shoots powerful optic blasts.
“Because of his eyes, people often don’t recognise me,” Asano says. “Earlier I was interviewed by a big fan of Mortal Kombat. He was showing me his Mortal Kombat tattoo, and I asked him who his favourite character is. He was like, ‘Of course, it’s your role’. Many fans are encouraging me, and it gives me a really warm feeling.”
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Playing Hogun in Kenneth Branagh’s Thor and Taika Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok was a blast as well, both onscreen and off. Australian action film royalty Chris Hemsworth was welcoming and invited him to his home outside Byron Bay.
“Beautiful, beautiful,” Asano again says, noting that Hemsworth is a great guy. “He is a real superhero, he really is. He’s got a big heart.” The only problem was that Asano received a parking ticket. “I didn’t know where I should park, and then the police came and said I shouldn’t park there.”
I suggest he should have said, “I’m a movie star”, and he laughs.
Since we first met more than 20 years ago his career has been evolving.
“There has been this whole international part, also in the US, and now I’m back in Cannes, and just happy to see you again. My career has come full circle but, in the end, I don’t think that as a person I have changed much.”
In Yukiko Sode’s All the Lovers in the Night, adapted from Mieko Kawakami’s bestselling novel, he plays Mitsutsuka, a Tokyo physics teacher who meets the reclusive and shy proofreader Fuyuko (Yukino Kishii). They form a bond over their mutual love of light — she is impressed by his explanations of how light works and the minutiae of particle matter. Their bond transforms into romance and the film is a quietly powerful study of loneliness and connection.
“Mitsutsuka is a sensitive kind of man who surely has never been outside of Japan,” Asano explains. “Then he meets this young woman and tries to have a relationship with her, but he’s still very hurt from his past. He cannot escape it, so he ends up lying to her. But he’s a nice guy, really, and just wants to protect himself.”
Asano is a tall Japanese man and in the film he sometimes leans over to speak to the petite Fuyuko (Kishii) as he does today when posing for photos with his director and co-star. As it happens, Asano has Norwegian heritage. (He is of Navajo, Dutch, Norwegian and Japanese descent.) He’s like a Norse god, I suggest. Asano responds with a laugh.
“This is something that might be difficult to imagine, but when I was a kid I was blonde and people could only see me as a foreigner. So even in the city, people would talk to me in English, and they would point at me, saying ‘He’s a foreigner’, so I didn’t feel like a normal Japanese.
“As an actor, this is something that is a quality, but as a child I didn’t know my place. I feel like it was my destiny to be in Thor.”
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His mother, though was supportive.
“It was deeply rooted in me that I was different from the others, and my mother would be positive about it,” explains Asano. “This might seem like something that everyone would say to their children, but in Japan it’s not so much the case. They tend to say, ‘Be like the others’, so I was asking myself, what can I do if I’m not Japanese? Where do I come from?
“All these questions made me more creative. It is also something that helped me when I had to create a character and also in creating music.”
Aside from acting, Asano is the singer in a band called SODA!, “a punk and funk mix”, he notes. He concedes that music is a different creative outlet to acting.
“With acting there’s always a script, but I can make a song from zero, and then it’s like a painting or a drawing.”
He admits he has passed his penchant for originality onto his kids.
“I always tell them to just try something, because I wasn’t really good at my studies, but still I was able to find my path as an actor,” he says. “I always tell them that even if you fail, even if you end up with no money, ‘Just try it, you’ll see’. And if you are really in a pickle, then at that moment you can come to me, and we’ll find a way.”
Asano has two adult children, daughter Sumire and son Himi, with his ex-wife, Japanese pop singer Chara.
“My daughter is now 30 years old, can you imagine?” he says, clearly not feeling his age.
Both of his kids are doing some acting, though Himi, 26, is more a musician.
“He’s known too,” Asano says proudly. They are keeping it all in the family.
Mortal Kombat II is in cinemas; Mortal Kombat is available on several streaming platforms; Thor and Thor Ragnarok are available on Disney+; All the Lovers in the Night will screen later this year.
Helen Barlow is a Paris-based Australian freelance journalist and critic. In 2019 she received the La Plume d’Or for her services to French cinema. She is a voting member of the Lumiere Awards.
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