Anna Sawai Is About to Play Yoko Ono. She's Up for the Challenge.
Anna Sawai fumbled her first audition. She was 11, living in Tokyo after her family bounced from New Zealand to Hong Kong to the Philippines. Her mother, Kaoru, found a listing for a stage production of Annie in Tokyo just one month after they arrived. She bombed. But she filled the next year with dance and singing lessons, working tirelessly with her mother. And she nailed her second audition, going on to play the title role in a live Nippon Television broadcast. "It was my first experience where I learned, if you want something, you really have to put your head in the game. You have to go straight through and commit to it," Sawai, 34, tells me during a video call from her home in Tokyo.
Hard work never scared Sawai. Her early roles demanded a lot from her. In 2009, she joined her first Hollywood production, James McTeigue's Ninja Assassin, as a ninja, a physically strenuous role. She knew at the time that she wanted to pursue acting, but her team, which she says was better positioned in the music industry, had other plans. She fell into the J-pop world, joining a buzzy girl group called Faky, which prevented her from acting until her contract was lifted. Nearly a decade later, in 2018, she finally left the group and landed a role in the crime drama Giri/Haji, a critical success that paved the way for another supporting role in Apple TV+'s historical drama Pachinko. Her real breakthrough finally arrived in 2024 with ShÅgun, the acclaimed FX drama adaptation set in 17th-century Japan. "I was telling my agents that I wanted to do something that was going to challenge me and scare me," she says. Her turn as the highborn Toda Mariko earned her her first Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. This fearlessness has been vital to her evolution, especially as she plunges into the cinematic chapter of her career.
Source: yahoo.com
