Discovered as a teenager in a Harajuku shopping centre, the youngest of three children from Hadano, Kanagawa, began acting under her birth name Yuriko Kikuchi with Kaneto Shindo's 1999 film Will to Live. Early roles in Kazuyoshi Komuri's Sora no Ana and Katsuhito Ishii's The Taste of Tea earned festival screenings in Rotterdam and Cannes, paving the way for her breakout as the deaf teenager Chieko…
