Life and Career
Minami attended Amagasaki City Amagasaki Senior High School (尼崎市立尼崎高等学校, Amagasaki Shiritsu Amagasaki Koutou Gakkou?) and then Toho Gakuen College of Drama and Music, where she studied drama. While she was in drama school she auditioned for heroine's role in the 1984 film For Kayako (伽耶子のために, Kayako no tame ni?). She was selected from some 2000 applicants, and thus made her show business debut in a leading role.
In 1985 Minami made her television drama debut in TBS's daytime drama Godohansan (五度半さん), again playing a heroine's role. In September 1986 she made her stage debut alongside Bandō Tamasaburō in a production of Romeo and Juliet. Since then, her career has been mainly as an actress on television, film, and theater.
In 1995 she married musician and author Hitonari Tsuji, with whom she had one son. In March 2000 they were divorced.
On December 3, 2005 she remarried to actor Ken Watanabe, with whom she had acted in the TV Tokyo two-hour drama Itan no Natsu (異端の夏, literally "Summer of Heresy") in January of 2003.
On January 11, 2007, she stated publicly that her parents are Korean on NHK General TV's talk program, Hello from Studio Park (スタジオパークからこんにちは, sutajio paaku kara konnichiwa?). Additionally, her husband Ken Watanabe was quoted on April 24, 2007 on JoongAng Ilbo's Japanese website as saying "My wife is originally from Busan, so she has deep ties to Korea. Her mother is Korean."
Read more about this topic: Kaho Minami
Famous quotes containing the words life and/or career:
“And he thought to himself...., ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’”
—Bible: New Testament, Luke 12:17-20.
“Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)