Aoi Miyazaki

Aoi Miyazaki (宮﨑 あおい, Miyazaki Aoi, born November 30, 1985) is a Japanese actress. She is best known for roles such as in Nana and Virgin Snow. Her brother Masaru Miyazaki is also an actor, and they starred together in the film Hatsukoi. She married Sosuke Takaoka on June 15, 2007, her partner since she was fifteen. However, they divorced in December 2011. She is considered one of Japan's most beautiful women.

Miyazaki started working in the entertainment industry at the age of four. Initially she appeared mostly in commercials, magazine advertisements, and as an extra in television dramas. Miyazaki made her film debut in Ano Natsu no Hi at the age of fourteen.

Also at the age of 14, Miyazaki began to draw international attention for her role as the survivor of a traumatic bus hijack in Shinji Aoyama's Eureka. The film won the International Federation of Film Critics Prize at the Cannes Film Festival 2000, and resulted in her receiving the Best Actress award at the Japanese Professional Movie Awards. In 2003, she also made her musical debut in The Little Prince.

Later, Miyazaki won Best Actress award in the Cinemanila International Film Festival for her performance in Harmful Insect. She teamed up with Aoyama again in Eli, Eli, Lema Sabachthani?, an Un Certain Regard selection at Cannes 2005. Later in the same year, she co-starred with Mika Nakashima in the mainstream and commercially successful Nana.

In 2008, she won the Galaxy Individual Award for her performance in the NHK drama Atsuhime.

Miyazaki has appeared in commercials for major corporations including Aflac, Tokyo Metro, NTT DoCoMo and Olympus. In early 2008, she was also selected as Emporio Armani's new print advertisement model. Miyazaki has been the face of the Japanese popular apparel brand Earth music&ecology since 2010.

In recent years, Miyazaki has taken a more prominent position in humanitarian activism projects.

In 2005, she traveled with her older brother Masaru Miyazaki to India to experience poverty firsthand, and they highlighted the problems then found in their 2006 photobook Tarinai Peace.

In 2006, the siblings traveled to Denmark and Finland to investigate global warming. Their experiences were then published in their 2007 photobooks Love, Peace, and Green Tarinai, Peace2.

In April 2008, Miyazaki took part in the Gold Ribbon Walking event in Roppongi, Tokyo to raise awareness and funds for childhood cancer.

Her 2008 film Children of the Dark also addresses issues of child exploitation.

Films

TV dramas