Masanobu Andō

When Masanobu Ando completed school his direction towards a specific career path was not immediately concrete. In 1994 he was approached by a talent scout on the street and was offered an acting role, which began a new journey for Ando and his acting career. Ando's career took off after starring in his first film, Takeshi Kitano's Kids Return (1996), which became one of Kitano's most successful films in Japan. He played the role of Shinji, a high school student who gave up school to pursue boxing with his best friend. Ando became a popular young actor in Japan during the late 1990s, but his career slowed down in the 2000s, when he took fewer roles and was only in one or two films per year. He is most famous in the West for his psychopath-killer role of Kazuo Kiriyama in Kinji Fukusaku's Battle Royale (2000), a blockbuster dystopia film, which managed to be one of the most famous blood and gore films of the decade. In 1998 he visited Russia to film for a Japanese show, Seinen wa Kouya wo Mezasu, where he travelled from Vladivostok to Khabarovsk along the Trans-Siberian Railway. Ando co-starred in Takashi Miike's Big Bang Love, Juvenile A with Ryuhei Matsuda. He played a supporting role in Shinya Tsukamoto's Nightmare Detective. Ando also appeared in Katsuhito Ishii's Smuggler. He has taken part in the Toronto Film Festival. Around 2016, the twentieth anniversary of his entry into the film industry, Ando made a comeback and starred in several films, including Sailor Suit and Machine Gun: Graduation, Gonin Saga, and Sadako vs. Kayako.

Ando is married and has two children.