Sonny Chiba profile
Actor profile

Sonny Chiba

23rd January 1939 Fukuoka, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan Acting

Sonny Chiba (born January 23, 1939 - August 19, 2021), also known as Shin'ichi Chiba, was a Japanese actor and martial artist. Chiba was one of the first actors to achieve stardom through his skills in martial arts, initially in Japan and later before an international audience. Born in Fukuoka, Chiba played a variety of sports in high school, including baseball and volleyball. He also practiced gymnastics and participated at the National Sports Festival of Japan in his third year. When he was a university student, he learned martial arts, earning a black belt in Kyokushin Karate in 1965 and later receiving a fourth degree in 1984. Chiba's career began in the 1960s, when he starred in two tokusatsu superhero shows. In his first role, he replaced Susumu Wajima as the main character Kōtarō Ran/Seven Color Mask in Seven Color Mask (Nana-iro Kamen) in the second half of the series. However, his breakthrough role was in the 1974 film The Street Fighter. Before retiring, Chiba had also appeared in a number of English language American films, including Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003) and Fast & Furious 3: Tokyo Drift (2006). Chiba died of COVID-19 complications at the hospital in Tokyo on 19 August 2021, at the age of 82. Description above from the Wikipedia article Sonny Chiba, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

208 Movies 23 TV Shows 238 Credits
Filmography

Movies & TV Shows

Oyaji poster
Oyaji 25th August 2007 as Ryudo Numata
Sensei poster
Sensei 8th April 1989 as Makoto Ushiyama
Cabaret poster
Cabaret 26th April 1986 as Yakuza boss
Virus poster
Virus 26th June 1980 as Dr. Yamauchi
Classmates poster
Classmates 3rd June 1967 as Second Sublieutenant Hanzawa