Yûki Kudô

Youki Kudoh is a Japanese actress who has had solid crossover success in American films. She made her film debut at 13 in the 1984 Japanese comedy "Gyakufunsha kazoku," for which she earned the Best New Actress award at the Yokohama Film Festival. From there Kudoh appeared in several more Japanese feature films as the lead or in key supporting roles through the mid-to-late 1980s, before cult indie director Jim Jarmusch cast her as one of the leads in his 1989 crime comedy "Mystery Train." Kudoh played the wide-eyed half of a young Japanese couple making a journey to Memphis, to worship at the shrine of Elvis and Sun Records, and earned an Independent Spirit Award nomination for the role. In 1991, Kudoh played the lead in Japanese director Tadashi Imai's final film, "Sensou to seishun," for which she earned a Blue Ribbon Award for Best Actress. She went on to reunite with Jarmusch 20 years after "Mystery Train" for his far less popular crime drama "The Limits of Control," and along the way worked with big name Hollywood actors including Russell Crowe in the 1997 Australian crime drama "Heaven's Burning," with Ethan Hawke and Max von Sydow in the Oscar-nominated "Snow Falling on Cedars" in 1999, and with von Sydow again, as well as Jackie Chan, in the action comedy blockbuster "Rush Hour 3," in 2007.