Background
Takakura, Ken was born on February 16, 1931 in Kita-Kyushu City, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan.
高倉 健小田 剛一
Takakura, Ken was born on February 16, 1931 in Kita-Kyushu City, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan.
He attended Tochiku High School in nearby Yahata City where he was a member of the boxing team and English society. After graduating from Meiji University in Tokyo, Takakura attended an audition on impulse in 1955 at the Toei Film Company while applying for a managerial position.
lieutenant was around this time that he gained his streetwise swagger and tough-guy persona watching yakuza movies. This subject was covered in one of his most famous movies, Showa Zankyo-den (Remnants of Chivalry in the Showa Era), in which he played an honorable old-school yakuza among the violent post-war gangs. Toei found a natural in Takakura as he debuted with Denko Karate Uchi (Lightning Karate Blow) in 1956.
His breakout role would be in the 1965 film Abashiri Prison, and its sequel Abashiri Bangaichi: Bokyohen (Abashiri Prison: Longing for Home, also 1965), in which he played an ex-con antihero.
By the time Takakura left Toei in 1976, he had appeared in over 180 films. He gained international recognition after starring in the 1970 war film Too Late the Hero as the cunning Imperial Japanese Major Yamaguchi, the 1974 Sydney Pollack sleeper hit The Yakuza with Robert Mitchum, and is probably best known in the West for his role in Ridley Scott"s where he surprises American cops played by Michael Douglas and Andy García with the line, "I do speak fucking English".
He again appeared to Western audiences with the 1992 Fred Schepisi comedy Mr. Baseball starring Tom Selleck.
He appeared in three films since 2000: Hotaru (ホタル, Firefly) in May 2001, Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles, by Chinese director Zhang Yimou, in late December 2005, and Yasuo Furuhata"s Anata e (To You) in late August 2012, after a six-year hiatus.
He died of lymphoma on November 10, 2014. Shintaro Ishihara described him as "the last big star (in Japan)." Mr.