Loosely based on the lives of actresses Setsuko Hara and Hideko Takamine,[3] it tells the story of two documentary filmmakers investigating the life of a retired acting legend.

As a schoolgirl, she is scouted by Ginei's general manager to appear in a government-sponsored film to inspire troops serving in the Second Sino-Japanese War.

She meets the general manager's nephew, aspiring director Junichi Ōtaki, and Ginei's lead actress, Eiko Shimao.

Her family's store is destroyed in an air raid, but on a surviving wall, she finds a portrait of her painted by the artist and a promise of their reunion.

When asked by the film crew about the significance of the key, Chiyoko despondently realizes that she can no longer remember the artist's face, and resigns herself to a married life with Junichi.

En route to the hospital, Genya confides to Kyoji that after Chiyoko left for Hokkaido, the policeman confessed to him that he tortured the artist to death.

Millennium Actress is the second film directed by Satoshi Kon and his first original work, after the highly acclaimed Perfect Blue.

[7] The film is partly based on the life of Japanese actress Setsuko Hara, although it was produced and released more than a decade prior to her death.

[9] The project for Millennium Actress came from the words "Let's make a movie that looks like a trompe l'oeil" by Taro Maki, who decided to produce Kon's film because he thought his previous work was amazing.

"[6] The structure of the story was decided at the rough plot stage when Kon fleshed out this sentence, and the last scene remained intact in the finished film.

[6] He then worked with the scenario writer, Sadayuki Murai, and the producer to develop the episodes and detailed character settings to be included in the plot.

[14] The film was released in North America on September 12, 2003, distributed by DreamWorks' arthouse and foreign movie publishing company Go Fish Pictures, with a total of six screens.

The film was shown almost exclusively in New York and Los Angeles and received a minimal advertising campaign from Go Fish Pictures, a division of DreamWorks SKG.

[12] He aimed to create a film a kind of The Adventures of Old Lady Blowing Smoke by mixing fiction and reality to the point where it becomes meaningless to distinguish between them.

[23] The story also reflects the hospitalization Kon experienced after his debut as a manga artist, and the frustration and struggle he felt at that time: "Everything is ruined, but can I still make a comeback?

Kon said that the process of human growth is a repetition of death and rebirth, in which the values we have accumulated up to that point become unacceptable in a new phase, and even if we rebuild them once they are broken, they become unacceptable again in a new phase, and he involved the audience in the fractal of the film by asking them whether they would be able to get up and continue to "chase, run, and fall" even after they "fell" at the end of the film.

[25] Kevin M. Williams of the Chicago Tribune gave the movie 4 stars and put his feelings for the film this way: "A piece of cinematic art.

"[27] Millennium Actress received the Grand Prize in the Japan Agency of Cultural Affairs Media Arts Festival,[28] tying with Spirited Away.