AFP: Kikuchi says she's more than a Japanese actress
Oscar nominee Rinko Kikuchi, who makes her debut in a full English-language film in the upcoming "The Brothers Bloom," says she sees herself as more than just a Japanese actress...The 27-year-old, who was virtually unknown outside of Japan before "Babel," takes on an entirely different role in her new film, playing "Bang Bang," [above] the glamorous but mysterious sidekick of conmen out to bilk heiress Rachel Weisz..."I think Japanese actors should be cast if they fit a director's perception of the world, rather than casting Japanese actors just because there are Japanese roles in the script," she told AFP..."Of course since I'm Japanese, I would like to play Japanese roles. But I would also love to give it a try and play 'half-Japanese' roles," she said...Few Japanese actors have made it big in Hollywood, an absence that has been pinned to their frequent lack of fluency in English or to the competing pull from the domestic film industry...The controversy over the lack of Japanese in Hollywood intensified with 2005's "Memoirs of a Geisha," in which the leading actresses playing Japan's traditional hostesses -- Gong Li and Zhang Ziyi -- were both Chinese. Kikuchi said that all actors' top concern was "to do good work." "Chinese or other Asian actors should be free to play Japanese roles as they see fit," she said...Kikuchi said there were definite cultural differences between working with Japanese and Western directors, going beyond the language barriers. She said that on Japanese sets, actors kept their distance from one another. "In Japan, in a very good way, we have a culture where we infer one another's feelings and we defer to the pecking order and properly show respect," she said. "Overseas, you're asked to give straight answers and it is expected that you give straight responses," she said. "That culture seems to foster a closer relationship among actors and staff."
