Hiroyuki Sanada

Sanada was a working actor in Japan for a quarter of a century before Western audiences noticed him at all. The credits run back to the 1970s: The Executioner, Message from Space, G.I. Samurai, Shogun's Ninja, Samurai Reincarnation, Legend of the Eight Samurai. He was an action star first, and the training is visible in everything since; he moves like a man who learned the choreography before he learned the lines. Ring in 1998 and The Twilight Samurai in 2002 mark the turn toward serious dramatic work, The Japanese honours are extensive: three Blue Ribbon awards for best actor, four Kinema Junpo awards, a Japan Academy Film Prize and a Mainichi Film Award.

What he plays is discipline. His characters keep a code and the tension is in what keeping it costs them. In The Last Samurai he is Ujio, the one who refuses to be charmed by the American. In The Wolverine he is a son who has already lost the argument with his father. In Bullet Train and John Wick: Chapter 4 he is the still point in films made almost entirely of noise.

For two decades Hollywood cast him as the dignified Japanese presence in somebody else's story, which he did impeccably and which was plainly beneath him. Shogun corrected that, and the Primetime Emmy for lead actor in a drama series followed. The Japanese government gave him the Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon in 2018, and Time named him one of the hundred most influential people in the world in 2025, forty years into the career.