Kikuchi was born on January 6, 1981, in Hadano, Kanagawa, the youngest of three children. She was discovered by a talent agent on the street at the age of 15.
Career
Kikuchi made her debut in 1999, under her birth name, Yuriko Kikuchi, with the Kaneto Shindo film Will to Live. Soon after, in 2001, she starred in the celebrated Kazuyoshi Komuri film Sora no Ana, which was featured at several international festivals, including the Rotterdam Film Festival. In 2004, Kikuchi appeared in the well-received Katsuhito Ishii film The Taste of Tea, which was selected for the Cannes Film Festival. In 2006, Kikuchi was chosen by Japanese film producerYoko Narahashi for the Alejandro González Iñárritu film Babel, where she played Chieko Wataya, a troubled, deaf teenage girl, for which she received international attention. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Kikuchi was the fourth person in Academy Award history to be nominated for a role in which she does not speak. She won several awards, such as the National Board of Review Award for Best Breakthrough Female Performance and the Gotham Independent Film Award for Breakthrough Actor. She has appeared in two of Mamoru Oshii's films: The Sky Crawlers and Assault Girls. Kikuchi starred in Rian Johnson's second film, The Brothers Bloom, which was her first full English-language feature. Though she plays a main character, she only speaks three words; her character is said to only know three words of English. In 2010, Kikuchi was cast as Naoko in Tran Anh Hung's adaptation of Haruki Murakami's novel Norwegian Wood. In March 2011, she was added to the cast of 47 Ronin, the first English-language adaptation of the Chushingura legend, Japan's most famous tale of samurai loyalty and revenge. Kikuchi described her villain character to the American version of Glamour as "a real bitch." In 2013, she appears in Pacific Rim, having improved her English by watching the American television seriesThe Voice. In 2014, Kikuchi starred in Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter, directed by David Zellner. Kikuchi was cast in the Season 2 of the HBO science fiction series Westworld.
Personal life
Kikuchi married Japanese actor Shōta Sometani on December 31, 2014. In October 2016, Kikuchi gave birth to their first child.
