Yukino Kishii is a Japanese actress. She has played Taka in the 55th NHKtaiga dramaSanada Maru, Sari Ishikawa in the film Pink and Gray, and Taka Kōda in the 99th NHK asadoraManpuku, among numerous other TV and film roles. Her lead performance in the 2017 filmGoodbye, Grandpa! earned a Best Newcomer Award at the 39th Yokohama Film Festival.
Biography
Kishii was born in 1992 in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. She made her acting debut in 2009 as elementary school student Nana Sakurai in the drama Princess Sara. After a series of minor film and TV appearances, in 2015 she played the role of Taeko Hakozaki, a girl whose friend falls in love with Taeko's father, in the Kenji Yamauchi film I Love My Friend's Father, as well as the supporting role of Kanako in the TBS drama 99.9 Criminal Lawyer. The next year Kishii landed several more TV and film roles. Her film roles included Yumika, an ex-girlfriend of a photographer whose rock star subject becomes attracted to her, in Grab the Sun, and Chieko Matsuda, a teenager whose classmate seeks to impress her by getting a driver's license, in a film adaptation of the mangaMoriyamachu Driving School. She also appeared in film adaptations of the debutShigeaki Kato novel Pink and Gray and the Mariko Koike novel Double Life, and played the role of Taka, Nobushige's third wife, in the 55th NHK taiga drama Sanada Maru. Kishii's first lead film role came in the 2017 Yukihiro Morigaki film Goodbye, Grandpa! as Yoshiko Haruno, the granddaughter of a recently deceased family patriarch. Sarah Ward of Screen Daily described her performance as "especially impressive, her wise-beyond-her-years demeanour helping to flesh out a protagonist largely tasked with observing everyone around her". Kishii's performance in Goodbye, Grandpa! won her a Best Newcomer Award at the 39th Yokohama Film Festival. That same year she played Sumire Michibata in the TBS television seriesRental Lovers and Miyuki Asakawa in the Kiyoshi Kurosawascience fiction dramaForeboding on Wowow. In 2018 Kishii took on roles in two NHK dramas: the drama School Lawyer, as middle school teacher Shiori Mochozuki; and Manpuku, the 99th NHK asadora, as Taka Kōda. She also appeared in the Fuji TV adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo.
