FrameThrower · Actors · Ken Watanabe
Ken Watanabe
11 films · 1,127 frames · top-billed in 5 · 1985–2023
Born 21 October 1959 · Uonuma, Niigata, Japan
Ken Watanabe is a Japanese stage, film, and television actor. To English-speaking audiences he is known for playing tragic hero characters, such as General Tadamichi Kuribayashi in Letters from Iwo Jima and Lord Katsumoto Moritsugu in The Last Samurai, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Among other awards, he has won the Japan Academy Prize for Best Actor twice, in 2007 for Memories of Tomorrow and in 2010 for Shizumanu Taiyō. He is also known for his roles in director Christopher Nolan's Hollywood blockbusters Batman Begins and Inception.
Awards
On FrameThrower we have: 11 films · 1,127 frames · top-billed in 5 · 1985–2023
- Blue Ribbon Awards for Best Actor2007
- Elan d'or Award for Newcomer of the Year1987
How their films are shot
Measured across 1,127 frames from the 11 films we hold. This is the look of the work Ken takes, not a claim about any single frame — we index the cast of a film, never the people in a shot.
Across the 11 films we hold, 49% of their frames are night, 50% low key — the look of the work Ken takes.
Time of day
Lighting
Shot size
Camera angle
Mood
Films in the library
Every poster opens that film — stills, cinematography notes and colour palette.
Bel Canto
2018 · Katsumi Hosokawa
The Sea of Trees
2015 · Takumi Nakamura
Inception
2010 · Saito
The Last Samurai
2003 · Moritsugu Katsumoto
Tampopo
1985 · Gun
The Creator
2023 · Harun
Godzilla: King of the Monsters
2019 · Dr. Ishiro Serizawa
Godzilla
2014 · Dr. Ishiro Serizawa
Memoirs of a Geisha
2005 · Le président
Batman Begins
2005 · Ra's al Ghul
Pokémon Detective Pikachu
· Lieutenant Hide Yoshida
Often with
Shared films in this library, not a full filmography.
A reference database for filmmakers
FrameThrower is a fully machine-searchable film database and visual reference library — all 1,127 frames from Ken Watanabe's 11 films, and 5,000+ films besides, indexed frame by frame and readable by AI. Search it in plain language, from a reference image, or by colour; call it from an API, an MCP server or an SDK. It's the reference layer for making the next movie.