Quotes

You're willing to take a plunge from any height. There's just something about being in front of a camera. And being in front of an audience is the same thing. It's hopeless. I guess I'm just a ham.

I think I tend to prefer freedom. I've always worked in a manner that I will give it my all; I'll do it to my heart's content, and then the director will tell me, "You can tone it down a little. You don't have to go so far." That's the way I've always worked and I think I don't really prefer that oppressive type of direction.

Japanese cinema was very focused on capturing both the ordinary and the extraordinary, so a lot of the things that we captured tended to be existentialist, as well. In the films, there were influences by Camus or Sartre, different philosophers. In the theater, we referred to Brecht, so in that sense there was a lot of inclination towards existentialism and extraordinary references were very strong. In that sense, I thought this piece - that was based on Abe Kobo's work - was something altogether very different from works by Kurosawa, for instance.

If someone were to ask me on my deathbed what my best film was, I think I'd say it was Harakiri, which I made when I was 29. You could say my most important work was finished by the time I was 29! So I'd like to put Harakiri (1962) on the list. Next is Yojimbo (1961). And then there's a director named Kihachi Okamoto, who did a film called The Sword of Doom - this was a very difficult film for me, one that's been made into a movie many times in Japan. Then there's Ran (1985) - the last film I did with Kurosawa. Before that, I took over for the actor Shintarô Katsu in Kurosawa's Kagemusha: The Shadow Warrior (1980), which won the Grand Prix at Cannes. Lastly, there's Hideo Gosha's The Steel Edge of Revenge (1969), which is a little bit different from an ordinary Samurai film.

I'm quieter than average, and a bit solitary. I think maybe those characteristics have something in common with the positive elements of a Samurai. I'm a loner. I worked hard as a film actor, but essentially I'm a theatre actor. For sixty-some years I served those two masters, but I never signed with a film company. Maybe you can call that lone wolf behavior a connection.

In reference to Japanese actors, while here in New York, whenever have free time, I take in a Broadway show. I intend to watch eight shows before I leave this time. American actors on stage, I'm struck by how powerful and skillful they are, and at the same time that I'm inspired, I also feel very regretful and sorrowful because I cannot say the same thing about Japanese actors. My generation of actors - not only actors, but directors - went through so much training and I wonder why the younger generation of Japanese actors today don't train as hard?

[on Akira Kurosawa] He had 300 horses brought in from the US and used them in the film. If he got a really good take, he would go to each of those 300 riders, shake their hands and say: "Good job!" So yes, he was "the emperor", but really in the best sense of the word.