Mariko Okada

Mariko Okada (岡田 茉莉子) is a Japanese stage and film actress who starred in films of directors Mikio Naruse, Yasujirō Ozu, Keisuke Kinoshita and others. She was married to film director Yoshishige Yoshida.

Biography
Okada was born the daughter of silent film actor Tokihiko Okada (real name Eiichi Takahashi), who died the year following her birth, and raised by her mother's sister in her early childhood. She gave her film debut in Mikio Naruse's 1951 Dancing Girl, for whom she worked again in Husband and Wife, Floating Clouds and Nagareru. Unsatisfied with the roles she was assigned to, she left Toho studios after her contract expired, and signed with Shochiku. In the following years, she starred in Yasujirō Ozu's Late Autumn and An Autumn Afternoon, Keisuke Kinoshita's Spring Dreams and The Scent of Incense, and Heinosuke Gosho's Hunting Rifle.

The 1962 Akitsu Springs was Okada's 100th film and the first under the direction of her future husband Yoshishige Yoshida. Between 1965 and 1971, she starred in all of Yoshida's films, independently produced melodramas narrated in an avant-garde fashion, of which Eros + Massacre was the formally most radical.

In later years, she appeared in films like Juzo Itami's Tampopo and Shinji Aoyama's My God, My God, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me? (2005), her last film role to date. She also regularly performed on stage and on television.

Awards

 * 1958: 13th Mainichi Film Awards - Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role for Season of the Demon Girl (悪女の季節)
 * 1962: 36th Kinema Junpo Awards - Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role for Love This Year (今年の恋) and Kiriko's Fate (霧子の運命)
 * 1962: 17th Mainichi Film Awards - Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role for Love This Year and Akitsu Springs (秋津温泉)
 * 1998: Golden Glory Award and Platinum Grand Prize, 8th Japan Movie Critics Awards