Makiko Watanabe

Makiko Watanabe has the strangest resume I have read in a while, and I mean that admiringly. Born in Tokyo in 1968, she started out being looked at for a living as a fashion model, moved into film around 1996, and has since appeared in more than sixty of them. That alone would be a career. But she also won a Mainichi Film Award for Best Screenplay in 2000 and the Asian Film Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2012, which means she holds a major prize for acting and a major prize for writing. Almost nobody manages both. She has never been the star who carries a film by force; she is the presence at the edge of the frame who quietly changes its temperature. Performances like that tend to come from people who are thinking about the whole film, not just their lines, and her writing award suggests exactly that.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Name (English)

Makiko Watanabe

Name (Japanese)

渡辺真起子

Reading

わたなべ まきこ

Born

September 14, 1968 (age 58)

Origin

Tokyo, Japan

Height

166 cm

Occupation

actor / fashion model / model / screenwriter / author

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Virgo / Monkey

Blood type

AB

Agency

ディケイド

Active years

1986 -

Awards & achievements

• 2012 Asian Film Award for Best Supporting Actress
• 2000 Mainichi Film Award for Best Screenplay

Works summary

Appearances

270 (1988–2026)

By year

1988: 1, 1991: 1, 1992: 1, 1993: 2, 1994: 3, 1995: 2, 1996: 5, 1997: 2, 1998: 1, 1999: 3, 2000: 4, 2001: 3, 2002: 2, 2004: 5, 2005: 5, 2006: 4, 2007: 12, 2008: 4, 2009: 6, 2010: 11, 2011: 6, 2012: 16, 2013: 13, 2014: 9, 2015: 11, 2016: 6, 2017: 8, 2018: 8, 2019: 11, 2020: 7, 2021: 9, 2022: 10, 2023: 9, 2024: 7, 2025: 7, 2026: 6

Debut work

バカヤロー! 私、怒ってます

Filmography / notable works

• Official sitehttps://www.watanabemakiko.com/
• Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/watanabe_makiko/
• Xhttps://x.com/nabemaki
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makiko%20Watanabe
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B8%A1%E8%BE%BA%E7%9C%9F%E8%B5%B7%E5%AD%90
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1092833

Tags

• Tokyo
• actor
• fashion model
• model

Last updated

September 18, 2026

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Works and profile fields sourced from Wikipedia reflect content as of 2026-08-26. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.