Kikuchi says she's more than a Japanese actress

Oscar nominee Rinko Kikuchi, who played a deaf schoolgirl yearning for an outlet for her sexual desire in Babel, says she sees herself as more than just a Japanese actress.

She will make her debut in a full English-language film in the upcoming The Brothers Bloom, having won critical acclaim and the first Oscar nomination for a Japanese actress in a half-century for Babel.

The 27-year-old, who was virtually unknown outside Japan before Babel, takes on an entirely different role in her new film, playing Bang Bang, the glamorous but mysterious sidekick of conmen out to bilk heiress Rachel Weisz.

Sitting with her Malboro Reds after being feted at the recent Japan Fashion Editors Club awards, Kikuchi, sporting a psychedelic one-piece dress designed by Stefano Pilati, was philosophical about being a Japanese star.

Kikuchi, carefully choosing her softly spoken words, said that cinema was about creating "a fictitious world."

"I think Japanese actors should be cast if they fit a director's perception of the world, rather than casting Japanese actors just because there are Japanese roles in the script," she said.

"What is important, I think, is that a director portrays a world that he or she wants to create in the film and that the roles fit to help create that world," she said.

"Of course since I'm Japanese, I would like to play Japanese roles. But I would also love to give it a try and play 'half-Japanese' roles," she said.

Few Japanese actors have made it big in Hollywood, an absence that has been pinned to their frequent lack of fluency in English or to the competing pull from the domestic film industry.

Ken Watanabe, arguably Japan's most famous name in Hollywood, is best known for his portrayals of Japanese, such as in his Oscar-nominated performance alongside Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai.

The controversy over the lack of Japanese in Hollywood intensified with 2005's Memoirs of a Geisha, in which the leading actresses playing Japan's traditional hostesses - Gong Li and Zhang Ziyi - were both Chinese.

Kikuchi said that all actors' top concern was "to do good work."

"Chinese or other Asian actors should be free to play Japanese roles as they see fit," she said.

Kikuchi mastered sign language to play the role of Chieko in Babel, which was directed by Mexican Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and interweaved three storylines unfolding in different parts of the globe.

While Babel was shot partially in Tokyo and in Japanese, The Brothers Bloom was filmed in English by US director Rian Johnson. The movie was largely shot in Eastern Europe and also stars Adrien Brody.

Kikuchi said there were definite cultural differences between working with Japanese and Western directors, going beyond the language barriers.

She said that on Japanese sets, actors kept their distance from one another.

"In Japan, in a very good way, we have a culture where we infer one another's feelings and we defer to the pecking order and properly show respect," she said.

"Overseas, you're asked to give straight answers and it is expected that you give straight responses," she said. "That culture seems to foster a closer relationship among actors and staff."

AFP