Keiko Takeshita

Keiko Takeshita won the Elan d'or Newcomer Award in 1978, and she is still working now. That is close to half a century, and the arithmetic is the whole point. I judge actors less by how brightly they start than by whether they are still there twenty and forty years later, because staying is the harder discipline. Born in 1953 in Higashi-ku, Nagoya, and standing 155 cm, she was never going to dominate a frame by physical presence; she lasted by taking each role that came to her seriously, decade after decade. She also crossed into voice work, playing the protagonist's mother, Hana Matsuzaki, in Studio Ghibli's From Up on Poppy Hill. Carrying a character on voice alone, with no face to help you, is a separate craft. Doing both well is what a career actor looks like.

Name (English)

Keiko Takeshita

Name (Japanese)

竹下景子

Born

September 15, 1953 (age 72)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Virgo / Snake

Origin

Higashi-ku, Aichi Prefecture, Japan

Height

155 cm

Occupation

actor / seiyū

University

Tokyo Woman's Christian University

Awards & achievements

• 1978 Elan d'or Award for Newcomer of the Year

Motto

Private

• Official sitehttp://www.takeshitakeiko.net/en/
• Xhttps://x.com/keiko_t_staff
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%AB%B9%E4%B8%8B%E6%99%AF%E5%AD%90

Tags

• Aichi Prefecture
• actor
• seiyū

Last updated

2026-07-26

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.