Naoto Takenaka

If you know Naoto Takenaka only from the gag that made him famous in Japan — the man laughing and raging at once, both expressions fighting for control of one face — his record will surprise you. In 1991 he won the Blue Ribbon award for best actor and the FIPRESCI prize at the Venice Film Festival. The same year. A comedian, taken seriously by international critics. Born in Yokohama in 1956 and trained at Tama Art University, he has worked as an actor, a comedian, a singer, a film director, a voice actor and — a detail that delights me — a whistler. Japanese audiences also know him as the dubbing voice of Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury in the Avengers films, which is a genuinely odd thing to carry in the same career as an art-house directing prize. Long lists of occupations usually make me suspicious, because they often mean someone is mediocre in several directions at once. Takenaka is the exception, and I think the reason is that none of it looks like career management. It looks like appetite. He does a thing because he wants to know what it feels like from the inside, and the art-school background fits that — a person who treats a film, a song and a ridiculous face as the same category of object. What I find faintly intimidating is how thoroughly the clowning conceals the discipline. He always appears to be playing. Then you look at the awards and understand that the playing was the method, not a holiday from it. Total silliness plus total commitment, with no line drawn between them, is rarer than it sounds and much harder to fake.

Name (English)

Naoto Takenaka

Name (Japanese)

竹中直人

Born

March 20, 1956 (age 70)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Pisces / Monkey

Origin

Kanazawa-ku, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan

Height

168 cm

Occupation

actor / singer / film director / seiyū / comedian

University

Tama Art University

Awards & achievements

• 1991 Blue Ribbon Awards for Best Actor
• 1991 FIPRESCI Prize at Festival of Venice
• Golden Arrow Award

Motto

Private

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%AB%B9%E4%B8%AD%E7%9B%B4%E4%BA%BA

Tags

• Kanagawa Prefecture
• actor
• singer
• film director

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.