Big in Japan
Brian Logan on how action star Hiroyuki Sanada ended up
doing Shakespeare with the RSC
These must be strange days for Hiroyuki Sanada, who is starring alongside
Sir Nigel Hawthorne in the RSC's production of King Lear. In his native
Japan, everyone knows his work, whereas over here...
"Remember he's a big star,"says the RSC's press officer."Think Tom Cruise."
But that's easier said than done, not least because Sanada is meekness
personified.
These must be strange days for Hiroyuki Sanada, who is starring alongside
Sir Nigel Hawthorne in the RSC's production of King Lear. In his native
Japan, everyone knows his work, whereas over here...
"Remember he's a big star,"says the RSC's press officer."Think Tom Cruise."
But that's easier said than done, not least because Sanada is meekness
personified.
"One year ago I heard that I was to join the RSC,"he recalls."Me! I couldn't
believe it." Sanada has been acting in Japan since the age of five, 34 years
ago. At 13, he joined the Japan Action Club, a martial arts-cum-drama school
founded by the kung-fu movie icon Sonny Chiba. Chiba believed that every film
and stageplay needed agile, athletic performers, and that every actor should
be physically versatile. Sanada is his most illustrious protege. "I wanted to
be a great actor,"he says now,"and in my imag can do everything hims: action,
martial arts, singing, dancing."
Ten years in action movies followed. Sanada co-starred with Chiba himself
in many, including Legend of the Eight Samurai, which saw pupil and mentor
feature as warriors of Princess Shizu, battling a giant centipede, ghosts,
and an immortal witch. Soon Sanada was a star in his own right, the teenage
lead in the hit TV series Message from Space, in which he fought the evil
Gavana Empire, led by the Emperor Golem XIII. In Royal Warriors, the young
star- known at the time as "Henry" or "Duke" Sanada-co-starred with Michelle
Yeoh, later to find western fame as a Bond girl in Tomorrow Never Dies.
"My fans were very surprised when suddenly I stopped making action movies,
" he says. "It was a dangerous and risky choice for me, but I did it. As a
teenager and in my 20s, I didn't mind there being no meaning in my work. But
to be over 30 is an important time for an actor." Sanada's work grew more
varied: between the action films - which he still makes - he starred in TV
soaps, drama, musicals, comedy. He became a celebrity, his life, loves an
recendivorce pored over in Japan's ress."Now I'm very happy to be in London
because I'm free. I go on the tube and on the bus and can walk around
everywhere_" His voice tails off exultantly.
It's easy to see why Sanada is beloved back home.Resplendent in traditional
Japanese garb- he's taking a break from rehearsals- he looks a decade younger
than his 39 years. He seems sensitive and sympathetic.Asked how big a star he
is in Japan, he's to modest to answer.His interpreter seems proud to take on
the responsibility. "Very big," she beams.
This is Sanada's second Shakespeare in two years at the Barbican."Sensitivity
,shrewdness, grief, outrage and a capacity for love all mark his Hamlet," one
critic commented of his 1998 appearance. Like today's Lear, that production
was directed by Yukio Ninagawa. While the performance was in Japanese, Sanada
was nevertheless "very scared. I thought that was my biggest challenge." And
so it might have remained, had Nigel Hawthorne not seen him in the role and
suggested to Ninagawa that he play the Fool to Hawthorne's own Lear.
Sanada himself is no less incredulous: "This is the biggest challenge of my
life. Speaking English onstage? Shakespearean English? Unbelievable." Sanada
has made a handful of films in English but, by his own admission, "filming is
much easier - we have many takes".
It's hard to overstate the leap Sanada has made. "I don't like safety," he
remarks. His varied career makes him the perfect foil to Hawthorne's Lear -
both commercially (whereas Hawthorne shifts tickets in the UK, it was Sanada
who put bums on seats during the production's hit Tokyo run) and artistically.
Sanada promises to be a uniquely acrobatic Fool.
But the most daring jump may be still to come. "After this work, maybe some-
thing will change inside me. I don't know how I'll feel, but I sense I may
make some difficult choices: live here or go back to Japan? Continue acting or
not? To be or not to be? I don't know. For now, I just do it."
◎ King Lear opens at the Barbican, London EC2 (0171-638 8891), tonight.
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