In Japan children of famous actors often follow in their parent's footsteps as if it were part of some foreordained destiny. There are many examples of this in kabuki, where acting families can trace their lineages back generations, but it happens quite a lot in the supposedly more modern world of film, too.
The son of Mikijiro Hira and Yoshiko Sakuma, both actors with long, illustrious film careers, Takehiro Hira falls into the large "second-generation actor" bin, but he is also a one-of-a-kind stand-out.
Born in 1974, Hira went to high school in Rhode Island and studied at Brown University, where he polished his English to native fluency. After cycling through a variety of jobs, from tempura chef to financial analyst, he returned to Japan and, at the age of 27, became an actor.
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