ANSEL ELGORT

Golden Globe-nominated Ansel Elgort has quickly amassed an impressive body of work as both an actor and musician.

Elgort recently starred in the lead role as Tony in Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of the Broadway musical, West Side Story. Pulitzer Prize winner and Oscar® nominee Tony Kushner penned the revival of the 1957 musical. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures released the film on December 10, 2021. It garnered seven Academy Awards® nominations, including Best Picture, and a leading eleven nominations at the 27th Critics' Choice Awards, including Best Picture and Best Acting Ensemble.

He previously starred in the Warner Bros. adaptation of the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Goldfinch and Edgar Wright’s action crime thriller Baby Driver, opposite Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx, and Lily James for which he was nominated for a Golden Globes Best Actor award. The film released in June 2017 and grossed $227 million worldwide, against a production budget of $34 million.

Elgort rose to prominence as the lead of Fox 2000’s The Fault in Our Stars. The film earned him a slew of awards including a Teen Choice Award for Choice Breakout Star and Choice Movie Actor: Drama, a Young Hollywood Award for Fan Favorite Male Actor, and an MTV Movie Award for Movie of the Year.

In addition to acting, Elgort is an accomplished recording artist. His success has generated a passionate fan base driven by the singles Supernova and Home Alone. He also collaborated with Grammy nominated artist, Logic, on Elgort’s You Can Count on Me and Logic’s Killing Spree.

A graduate of LaGuardia High School of the Performing Arts, Elgort starred opposite Alexis Bledel in Matt Charman’s play Regrets, directed by Carolyn Cantor for Manhattan Theater Club, while finishing up his senior year of high school. His performance received rave reviews, including Bloomberg’s “Elgort is a magnetic presence destined perhaps for the multiplex” and the AP’s “Elgort radiates the brooding magnetism of James Dean, uplifted by a kind of glinting purity.”

Elgort found his love for performing through dance. He was featured tap-dancing at the CFDA Awards in 2011, and as a child he performed both in The Nutcracker and Swan Lake at Lincoln Center with the New York City Ballet. As a singer, Elgort has worked with many composers including Jason Robert Brown and Louis Andriessen.

He currently resides in New York.

KEN WATANABE

Ken Watanabe made his American film debut in Edward Zwick’s Oscar®, Screen Actors Guild, Critics’ Choice and Golden Globe Award-nominated drama “The Last Samurai,” opposite Tom Cruise. Watanabe has collaborated with some of most significant filmmakers of our time. In 2006, he portrayed the courageous Japanese General Tadamichi Kuribayashi in director Clint Eastwood’s award-winning World War II drama “Letters from Iwo Jima.” He worked with director Christopher Nolan on the 2005 blockbuster “Batman Begins” and subsequently on the director’s “Inception.” For Rob Marshall, Watanabe starred in “Memoirs of a Geisha,” the lush screen adaptation of Arthur Golden’s best-selling novel.

In 2018, Watanabe starred alongside Julianne Moore in director Paul Weitz’s “Bel Canto,” an adaptation of Ann Patchett’s best-selling novel, based on actual events in Peru in the mid-1990s. Watanabe also lent his voice to “Isle of Dogs,” Wes Anderson’s stop-motion animated film that opened the 68th Berlin Film Festival in competition.

In 2014, Watanabe co-starred with Sally Hawkins and David Strathairn in “Godzilla,” directed by Gareth Edwards. Watanabe’s English-language film credits also include Gus van Sant’s “Sea of Trees,” and the vocal role of Drift in Michael Bay’s “Transformers: The Last Knight” and “Transformers: Age of Extinction.” More recently, he starred opposite Ryan Reynolds and Justice Smith in the first-ever live-action Pokémon adventure, “Pokémon Detective Pikachu.”

In 2006, Watanabe starred in and executive produced the Japanese film “Memories of Tomorrow,” for which he won a number of Best Actor honors, including the Japanese Academy Award and the Hochi Film Award. In 2009, Watanabe led “Shizumano Taiyô” (“The Unbroken”) for which he won his second Japanese Academy Award, and the Hochi Film Award for Best Actor. His credits also include “Yurusarezaru mono,” Sang-il Lee’s Japanese-language remake of Clint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven,” for which he earned a Japanese Academy Award; the international hit comedy “Tampopo,” directed by Juzo Itami; ”Rage,” which premiered at the 2016 Toronto Film Festival; “Ikebukuro West Gate Park”; ”Space Travelers”; “Oboreru Sakana” (“Drowning Fish”); and “Shin Jinginaki Tatakai/Bosatsu” (“Fight Without Loyalty/Murder”), an updated version of the popular Yakuza movie series.

On the stage, Watanabe garnered a 2015 Tony Award nomination for his performance as the King of Siam opposite Kelli O’Hara in Lincoln Center Theater’s acclaimed revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “The King and I,” directed by Bartlett Sher. The production marked Watanabe’s American stage and Broadway debuts. He returned for the revival in London’s West End at the Palladium Theatre in June 2018 and received an Olivier Award nomination.

Watanabe began his acting career with the Tokyo-based theater company En. His lead performance in the company’s production of “Shitayamannen-cho monogatari,” directed by Yukio Ninawara, caught the attention of both critics and Japanese audiences. Last year, Watanabe returned to the Tokyo and Osaka stages in critically acclaimed, sold out runs of the comedy “Dialogue with Horowitz,” by Koki Mitani. His Japanese theatre credits also include “Hamlet,” “The Lion in Winter” and “The Royal Hunt of the Sun.”

In 1982, Watanabe made his television debut with “Michinaru Hanran.” His formidable screen presence in the subsequent Samurai drama series “Dokuganryu Masamume” led to additional roles in the historical series “Oda Nobunaga” and “Chushingsra,” and the film “Bakumatsu Junjou Den.”