Masanobu Ando



Masanobu Ando is a Japanese actor.
Ando has appeared in films such as Takeshi Kitano's Kids Return, Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale, Takashi Miike's Sukiyaki Western Django, and Chen Kaige's Forever Enthralled. He also appears in Tsai Ming-liang's award-winning film No No Sleep, in a series of statically filmed urban scenes without dialogue.

Career

After finishing school, Ando did not know what to do, but became an actor in 1994 after being approached on the street by a talent scout and being offered an acting role. Ando's career took off after starring in his first film, Takeshi Kitano's Kids Return, which became one of Kitano's most successful films in Japan. He played the role of Shinji, a high school student who gave up school and continued into boxing with his best friend. Ando became a popular young actor in Japan during the late 1990s, but his career slowed down in the 2000s, when he took fewer roles and was only in one or two films per year. He is most famous in the West for his psychopath-killer role of Kazuo Kiriyama in Kinji Fukusaku's Battle Royale, a blockbuster dystopia film, which managed to be one of the most famous blood and gore films of the decade.
In 1998 he visited Russia to film for a Japanese show, Seinen wa Kouya wo Mezasu, where he travelled from Vladivostok to Khabarovsk along the Trans-Siberian Railway. Ando co-starred in Takashi Miike's Big Bang Love, Juvenile A with Ryuhei Matsuda. He played a supporting role in Shinya Tsukamoto's Nightmare Detective. Ando also appeared in Katsuhito Ishii's Smuggler.
He has taken part in the Toronto Film Festival.
Around 2016, the twentieth anniversary of his entry into the film industry, Ando made a comeback and starred in several films, including , Gonin Saga, and Sadako vs. Kayako.

Personal life

Ando is married and has two children.

Filmography

Film