Born in Tokyo on 9th May 1983, Ryuhei Matsuda is the son of the hugely popular actor Yusaku Matsuda ( Tanteoi Monogatari ) and actress Miyuki Matsuda ( Audition ). Only six years old when his father died, aged 40, he was approached nine years later by Nagisa Oshima to star in the samurai movie Gohatto as a curiously androgynous youth, a role for which he spent two months practising kendo. Shortly afterwards, Matsuda dropped out of high school to concentrate on his burgeoning career and he has now become a successful and popular actor.
"I don't know how I do it,'" says Matsuda when asked about his work. "I guess it's just instinct. I've never studied acting, you see. I like to play people who play video games all the time, or people who constantly want to go out and kill people. Those kind of roles enable me to pull out deep emotions of anger and grief, feelings I've experienced in the past. They feel more comfortable for me somehow."
Although he never set out to follow in his father's footsteps, Matsuda is now firmly ensconced as hot property in the Japanese film industry. "I can't imagine what I'd been doing now if I hadn't become an actor," he says. "I was a soccer fanatic in junior high school so maybe I'd be a soccer player in the J-League..."
Filmography
2003 Nine Souls (dir. Toshiaki Toyoda) - Michiru
Renai Shashin / Collage of Our Life / Love Collage (dir. Yukihiko Tsutsumi) - Makoto
Showa Kayo Daizenshu (dir. Tetsuo Shinohara)
Hachigatsu no Kariyushi (dir. Iwao Takahashi)
2002
17 Sai (dir. Hoka Kinoshita)
2001
Shibito no Koiwazurai (dir. Kazuyuki Sibuya)
Aoi Haru / Blue Spring (dir. Toshiaki Toyoda) - Kujo
Hashire! Ichiro (dir. Kazuki Omori) - Ryu
