Name: Anna Sawai
Age: 29
Residence: Born in Wellington, New Zealand and raised in Yokohama, Japan.
Lives now: In a three-bedroom apartment in Tokyo with her mother.
Claim to fame: Ms. Sawai is a former Japanese pop idol – she was a founding member of the J-pop girl group Faky before leaving the band in 2018 – who has reinvented herself as a chameleon-like Hollywood actress. Last year she played an action hero in ‘F9’, the latest in the ‘Fast and Furious’ movie franchise. Now she stars in “Pachinko,” Apple TV+’s adaptation of Min Jin Lee’s acclaimed 2017 novel about four generations of a Korean immigrant family. “Because ‘F9’ was so big, I was afraid that the public would label me as the ‘Asian actress who does action,'” said Ms. Sawai. “And so when ‘Pachinko’ came along, I was so happy that it was something so profound, so dramatic and so absolutely different.”
Breakthrough: Ms. Sawai’s mother taught her to play the piano when she was 3 and encouraged her to take up acting at a young age. At age 11, she landed the lead role in a Nippon TV production of “Annie.” (She beat 9,000 other kids.) Three years later, she enrolled in a J-pop boot camp hosted by Avex, an entertainment conglomerate that has spawned some of Japan’s biggest dance acts. “At one point I took classes — tapping, dancing, walking, singing, all that — every day of the week,” she said. She trained during high school and joined Faky in 2013 as the group’s lead singer.
Latest project: In “Pachinko,” Ms. Sawai portrays a character not featured in the novel: Naomi, a young woman climbing the corporate ladder in Japan in the late 1980s. “Naomi is at a time when Japan introduced an equal employment opportunity law,” she said. “My mom was actually working around the same time and doing similar things to Naomi – you know, not taken seriously and just expected to stay with a company for three or four years until they marry one of the guys who work there.”
Next thing: Ms. Sawai is currently in Vancouver shooting “Shogun”, a reboot of the 1980 TV miniseries based on James Clavell’s 1975 novel. have to prove,” said Ms. Sawai. “You know, the kind of character you want to play.”
Piece of me: Ms Sawai first heard Britney Spears when she was 7 and has been obsessed ever since. “I remember seeing Britney’s concert videos,” she said. “It was my dream to do that. I wanted to be just like Britney Spears. I mean, I still do.”
