Tatsuya Fujiwara mini-bio: Tatsuya was born on the 15th May 1982, in Saitama Prefecture, Japan.
His first performance, at the age of 15, was in Yukio Ninagawa's production of Shintokumaru (1997), where Tatsuya was chosen as the lead part after auditions were held earlier in the year.
From a total of 40 applicants who auditioned for the role, Tatsuya won the part. Despite becoming ill before his first performance he continued with the show.
Ninagawa chose Tatsuya for the lead role because he stated that even though Tatsuya was very young and new to acting, he brought a fresh approach to everything, his accuracy and enormous concentration when acting is something that was very rare in young actors at that time, and still is.
Since Shintokumaru, Tatsuya has worked with Ninagawa on many more occasions, as well as acting in a collection of TV dramas and movies. Perhaps his most recognisable character in the West is Shuya Nanahara in Fukasaku Kinji's film adaption of the cult novel Battle Royale. He returned to this role in Battle Royale: Requiem
Tatsuya gained many fans through the movie adaptions of the popular manga 'Death Note'. In both movies Tatsuya plays Light Yagami.
In 2007, for 5 months, Tatsuya moved to England to study the English Language and attend various Stage Productions around the United Kingdom. Upon arriving back to Japan it was announced that Tatsuya was going to be part of the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of 'The Merchant of Venice' (playing the character Bassanio) touring in Japan.
After this Tatsuya returned to film with Chameleon, Snakes and Earrings and Kaiji. He will also be appearing in the upcoming film Parade.
