Ken Watanabe (渡辺 謙, Watanabe Ken, born October 21, 1959) is a Japanese actor, best 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.

He is also known for his roles in Christopher Nolan's films Batman Begins and Inception, as well as Memoirs of a Geisha, and Pokémon Detective Pikachu.

He made his Broadway debut in April 2015 in Lincoln Center Theater's revival production of The King and I in the title role.

[5] While with the troupe, he was cast as the hero in the play Shimodani Mannencho Monogatari, directed by the acclaimed Yukio Ninagawa.

He played the lead character, Matsudaira Kurō, in the television jidaigeki Gokenin Zankurō, which ran for several seasons.

He has gone on to garner acclaim in such historical dramas as Oda Nobunaga, Chūshingura, and the movie Bakumatsu Junjo Den.

He co-starred with Kōji Yakusho in the 1998 Kizuna, for which he was nominated for the Japan Academy Film Prize for Best Supporting Actor.

The film Sennen no Koi (Thousand-year Love, based on The Tale of Genji) earned him another Japanese Academy Award nomination.

In 2006, he won Best Lead Actor at the 30th Japan Academy Film Prize for his role in Memories of Tomorrow (Ashita no Kioku), in which he played a patient with Alzheimer's disease.

Watanabe was introduced to most Western audiences in the 2003 American film The Last Samurai, set in 19th Century Japan.

In April 2019, it was announced that Warner Bros. International Television Production and TV Asahi were teaming up to remake The Fugitive (1993).

[16] Watanabe formally adopted Minami's son from her previous marriage to director Jinsei Tsuji, and for a time the three of them lived in Los Angeles.

In order to increase the amount of time the family could spend together, considering Ken's work requiring him to travel so much, they later returned to Japan.

[21] On March 13, 2011, he launched a YouTube page to raise awareness about the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami and the subsequent Fukushima nuclear disaster and invited celebrities to add their videos of the triple tragedy in Japan.

[22] In his video in English, he made a call to action to support the victims of triple disaster and to raise funds in the relief effort.

that prior to commencing work on The Last Samurai, it was discovered that he had contracted hepatitis C from a blood transfusion he received while undergoing treatment for his leukemia.