Rinka no hana (flower of Rinka blooming on the silver screen) Ikegami Kimiko (1959-2025)

Rinka no hana (flower of Rinka blooming on the silver screen) Ikegami Kimiko (1959-2025)

Born in New York on January 16, 1959, Ikegami Kimiko grew up in a family of entertainers, her grandfather being the kabuki actor Bando Mitsugoro VIII. She continued to work in film and television, playing the heroine with a unique presence in "The Man Who Stole the Sun," and delicately portraying the complex emotions of a woman living in a brothel in "Yohkiro" (1983), for which she received the Japan Academy Award for Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role. In "Hana no ran" (1988), she strongly portrayed the image of a woman in a turbulent period and won the Best Supporting Actress Award. In recent years, she has continued to play a variety of roles, including in "Forensic Woman. Her performance is characterized by the fusion of a dignified appearance and delicate emotional expression, and she portrayed glamour and melancholy in "Yohkiro" and core strength behind her loveliness in "The Man Who Stole the Sun. Compared to her contemporaries Mayumi Wakamura and
Keiko Matsuzaka, she stands out for her more moderate and audience-oriented charm; in 2024, she will appear in Kentaro Otani's "To You, the Wind Kanade", and in 2025, she announced the postponement of the Ishikawa performance of the musical version of "Bushi no Densetsu". Her career history, in which she was scouted by NHK studios in her second year of junior high school and overcame her father's opposition to appear in "Ai to Makoto", still symbolizes the strength of her core.