Ryuhei Matsuda

Early life

Matsuda was born on 9 May 1983 in Tokyo to Yusaku Matsuda, a Japanese actor of partial Korean ancestry, and Miyuki Matsuda (née Kumagai), a Japanese actress. He has two younger siblings, a younger brother, Shota Matsuda, and a younger sister by his parents' marriage and one older half-sister by his father's first marriage. His father died from bladder cancer in 1989, when Ryuhei was 6 years old. He attended Horikoshi High School, a Japanese high school that caters to celebrity students, but did not graduate.

Career

At the age of 15, Matsuda was offered the role of the desirable young samurai Kanō Sōzaburō in Nagisa Ōshima's 1999 film Taboo. The role helped boost him from an entirely unknown actor to a film star, earning him a Japanese Academy award "Newcomer of the Year", as well as "Blue Ribbon", "Kinema Junpo", and "Yokohama Film Festival" Awards for the "Best New Actor".

Since appearing in Taboo, Matsuda has played a wide range of roles, from the high school student Kujo in the 2001 film Blue Spring to the rock star Ren Honjo in the 2005 film Nana. In February 2013, it was revealed that Matsuda would play the part of a Japanese gangster in an upcoming sequel to the 2012 Indonesian film The Raid, named Berandal.

Personal life

On 11 January 2009, Matsuda married Lina Ohta (太田 莉菜, Ōta Rina), a Russian-Japanese model. Their first child, a baby girl, was born on 4 July 2009.

Awards

Matsuda won a Japanese Academy Award for the "Best Supporting Actor" in the 2011 film Tantei wa Bar ni Iru, and Nikkan Sports Film Award for the "Best Actor" in the 2013 film The Great Passage.