A fateful encounter：Okada Masaki: "Meeting director Hamaguchi Ryusuke in "Drive My Car" changed my attitude towards acting"

In "Fateful Encounters," we ask today's popular actors and artists about the people who influenced them. This time, Okada Masaki, who played Nashimoto Akira, an employee of a global shopping site in the movie "The Last Mile" (directed by Tsukahara Ayuko), talks about director Hamaguchi Ryusuke, whom he met while appearing in the movie "Drive My Car" (2021).

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Meeting director Hamaguchi Ryusuke in "Drive My Car" dramatically changed my awareness of acting.

Until then, I thought I fully understood that acting meant using my body to transform into the role, but appearing in "Drive My Car" made me realize even more that I need to know myself better when it comes to acting, and that I can't do this job or face acting unless I really face myself.

Director Hamaguchi's way of interacting with people, his way of working with his work, his words, and all of those things were the catalyst for me to change. Now, those things have formed the part of who I am, so meeting Director Hamaguchi was a really big thing for me. Profile Born August 15, 1989 in Tokyo. He made his debut in 2006, and in 2007, he appeared in the movie "Tennen Kokekko", the drama "Seito-shokun!" (TV Asahi), and "Hanazakari no Kimitachi e ~ Ikemen♂Paradise ~" (Fuji TV), and became popular. Since then, he has appeared in many popular movies, dramas, and stage productions. In 2021, the movie "Drive My Car" directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, in which he appeared, won the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. Following "Natsuzora" in 2019, he is currently appearing in the NHK morning drama "Tora ni Tsubasa". Upcoming works include the TV Asahi drama "The Travel Nurse" in October, the films "Angry Squad: Civil Servants and the Seven Swindlers" (scheduled for release on November 22nd) and "Yukite Kaheranu" (scheduled for release on February 21st, 2025).

The film "The Last Mile," which is currently in theaters and in which Tsukahara is directing and Nogi Akiko is writing the script, is a non-stop suspense story set in a "shared universe" that intersects with the world lines of the dramas "Unnatural" (2018) and "MIU404" (2020).