Actor Tomio Umezawa and singer Naoko Ken appeared on Tetsuko Kuroyanagi's long-running talk show "Tetsuko's Room" (TV Asahi) on January 29th. They talked about their experiences of being rejected in auditions to become a movie actor.
Looking at the monitor in the studio during the recording, Umezawa said, "I just looked at my face up close, and my eyes are narrow. They look like earthworms." He also revealed, "I couldn't become a movie actor because of these eyes."
When I was 18, I went to audition at Ofuna Studios. There were 70 to 80 people in line, but a man who seemed to be an assistant director brushed them off one by one. When I got in front of him, he said, "We don't need you."
"There's no way you're not wanted. If I act and they say I'm bad at it I'll just go home quietly, but there's no way you're not wanted just for standing there with an application form," "They don't want you because you have small eyes," "What? If you have big eyes you can become a movie actor," "Shut up and go home," they continued arguing. Realizing that he was definitely not suited to film, he decided to concentrate on the stage. "You rejected me then. You rejected a great actor. He's a once in 300 years actor," he boasted.
His wife's dream was to "go to Yakushima with my husband," but "if I went with my father, there would be a lot of hassle, so he said he would go alone, and so he went alone." However, he laughed and said, "I thought to myself that I was a little lucky to be left behind."
The two, who are each other's only "best friends" in the entertainment industry, apparently spent two-thirds of last year together. "It was longer than the time I spent with my wife," he told Ken.
