Masumi Okada

Early life

Okada was born in Nice, France, to a Japanese father and a Danish mother. His father, Minoru Okada, was an artist and his mother, Ingeborg Sevaldsen, was the sister of Eline Eriksen, the model for the "Mermaid of Copenhagen". He had an elder brother, Taibi Okada, who later became a tarento under the stage name 'E.H. Eric." French law at the time meant that Okada was initially registered under his Western name - Otto Sevaldsen. He was raised in a multilingual environment, fluent in French, Japanese, and (later) English.

The elder Okada was an associate of Chaïm Soutine who moved to Nice from Paris, and was oft patronized by Kunio Kishida. Masumi Okada spent his early childhood in La Gaude until 1939. Due to the outbreak of World War II, Okada's father took the family to Japanese Taiwan, and Okada attended school in Taipei for a time. However, his father was pursued relentlessly by the Kempeitai, and his mother could not bear it any longer and left Japan.

After the war, Okada moved to a housing complex for repatriates in Akasaka, Tokyo. As 'Otto Sevaldsen', he attended Saint Joseph International School (SJIS) in Yokohama, graduating in 1952.

Career

In 1952, while still a student at SJIS, Okada debuted as an actor in a musical at the Nichigeki Music Hall. He signed with Nikkatsu Corporation in 1954, appearing in his first film, "Hatsukoi Kanariya Musume"/"Canary Girl's First Love", the following year.

In 1956, Okada was cast as the bandmaster in Takumi Furukawa and Shintaro Ishihara's "Taiyo no Kisetsu"/"Season of the Sun". This performance led to his appearance in the companion film, "Kurutta Kajitsu"/"Crazed Fruit" (1956), in which he played the cool, laid-back, finger-snapping Amerasian, "Frank Hirosawa", the unofficial leader of a band of young "rebels without a cause". Okada allegedly stole every scene in which he appeared.

In a career which spanned more than five decades, Okada went on to appear in over 140 films. A talented and versatile entertainer, he was also active on stage and television. His credits include all genres in the three media—from stage musicals to horror films, from comedies to historicals to tragedies, and from Shakespeare to science-fiction.

Okada's mixed ethnicity and proficiency in Japanese, English and French enabled him to portray a wide range of characters, in roles as diverse as "Count Dracula" in "The Vampire Dracula Comes To Kobe" (1979) to "Brother Michael" in James Clavell's "Shogun" (1980). He acted as the French physicist, "Dr. Jules Masson", in Ishiro Honda's "Latitude Zero"/"Ido Zero Daisakusen"/"Atragon II" (1969). In the film, "Marco" (1973), he was the Chinese ambassador, "Ti Wai". In "Bye-Bye, Jupiter"/"Sayonara, Jupiter" (1984), he was cast as "Dr. Mohammed Mansur", and in "Getting Any?" (1994) -- a comedy with "Beat" Takeshi Kitano—Okada made a cameo appearance as the Russian leader, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin.

Okada's film credits also included "Arashi wo yobu otoko"/"Man Who Causes a Storm" (1957), "Akai hatoba"/"Red Quay" (1958), "Ankoku no Ryoken"/"Passport to Darkness" (1959), "Yoru no nagare"/"Evening Storm" (1960), "Oneechan wa tsuiteru ze"/"Anything Goes Three Dolls' Way" (1960), "Kyuketsu Dokurosen"/"Living Skeleton" (1968), "Moeru Tairiku"/"The Blazing Continent" (1968), "Isoge! Wakamono: Tomorrow Never Waits"/"Hurry, Young Ones! Tomorrow Never Waits" (1974), "Hishu monogatari"/"A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness" (1977), "Fuku no hana"/"Winter's Flower" (1978), "Umi to dokuyaku"/"The Sea and Poison" (1986), "CF Garu"/"Commercial Film Girl" (1989), "The Hunted" (1995), "Izo" (2004) and "Shiberia Chotokkyu 5"/"Siberia Express 5" (2005).

Personal life

Okada was married three times. In 1960, he announced his two-year "contractual marriage" to the renowned dancer and mime choreographer, Mamako Yoneyama—a union which ended even before the first year was over. Okada then remained single for over a decade; in 1972, he married Japanese actress Midori Fujita, with whom he had three sons, the eldest of whom, Yoshihiro Okada Makoto, is currently an actor and DJ in Japan. 22 years later, Okada divorced Fujita, and, in 1995, at the age of 60 years, he took his third wife, Keiko Yarita, a 34-year-old flight stewardess, who gave him his fourth child, a daughter named Tomomi, in 1998 who later become Miss International Japan 2019.

The turn of the millennium brought two tragic deaths in Okada's life. In 2000, his elder brother, Taibi, died of Parkinson's Disease in Sprecklesville, Maui Island, Hawaii. Then, on July 27, 2004, Okada's third son with Fujita was found hanged at his mother's home in the Denenchofu suburb of Tokyo. Shocked, Okada did not attend his son's private funeral the following day, but called a press conference a month later to refute allegations by the Shuukan Josei magazine that there had been bad blood between him and his 26-year-old son, who was an assistant stage designer with a theater company prior to his suicide. Okada said at the press conference, "I don't know why. It's been hard ....... and so sad when the child dies before the parent."

Okada was affectionately known by the fan nickname Fanfan (ファンファン).

Death

Okada suffered a relapse of his malignancy and was re-hospitalized, but succumbed to his illness at a Tokyo hospital on May 29, 2006.

Selected filmography

Dubbing

Dracula (Count Dracula (Frank Langella))