Yūya Yagira

I have such a soft spot for Yūya Yagira. Picture it: a kid barely into his teens, walking off with Best Actor at Cannes for Kore-eda's Nobody Knows, the youngest ever and the first Japanese performer to take it home, doing it all with these huge, quietly devastating eyes that barely needed dialogue. What gets me, though, isn't the trophy, it's the long game. He didn't coast on that golden child label or let it crush him; he disappeared, struggled, and clawed his way back as a real working actor. The grown-up Yagira keeps that translucent boyish hurt but layers on this low, menacing weight that can anchor a proper villain. He just makes a frame feel tense. Honestly, I think he only gets richer and grittier from here, and I'm here for every bit of it.

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.

Yūya Yagira is a Japanese actor born on March 26, 1990, in Tokyo. In 2004, while still a teenager, he won the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival, becoming the first Japanese actor to receive that honor. He won the award for Hirokazu Kore-eda's film Nobody Knows, and attended Horikoshi High School. He has continued to work as an actor across film and television throughout his career.

Name (English)

Yūya Yagira

Name (Japanese)

柳楽優弥

Reading

やぎら ゆうや

Born

March 26, 1990 (age 36)

Origin

Tokyo, Japan

Height

174 cm

Occupation

Actor / Child Actor / Film Actor

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Aries / Horse

Blood type

A

Agency

Stardust Promotion

Active years

2002 -

High school

Horikoshi High School

Awards & achievements

• 2004 — Cannes Film Festival Best Actor Award

Spouse

Ellie Toyota

Works summary

Appearances

109 (2003–2027)

By year (titles with a known year)

2003: 2, 2004: 2, 2005: 2, 2006: 3, 2007: 3, 2009: 1, 2010: 2, 2011: 3, 2012: 1, 2013: 4, 2014: 6, 2015: 6, 2016: 9, 2017: 13, 2018: 8, 2019: 7, 2020: 5, 2021: 7, 2022: 7, 2023: 3, 2024: 3, 2025: 2, 2026: 6, 2027: 1, year unknown: 3

Debut work

クニミツの政

Filmography / notable works

• Official sitehttps://official.stardust.co.jp/yuyayagira/
• Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/yuya_yagira.staff/
• Xhttps://x.com/ichigoichie_yy
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%9F%B3%E6%A5%BD%E5%84%AA%E5%BC%A5
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1188884

Tags

• From Tokyo
• Child Actor
• Film Actor
• Actor

Last updated

October 18, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. 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.