Hidetoshi Nishijima Was ‘Overwhelmed’ by This Filmmaker’s Work

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Hidetoshi Nishijima Was ‘Overwhelmed’ by This Filmmaker’s Work

The morning after “Drive My Car” won an Oscar for best international feature, its lead actor Hidetoshi Nishijima was already planning his next project.

Nishijima, 53, met with the director and screenwriter of the upcoming Apple TV+ show “Sunny” and is now one of its stars.

In “Sunny,” which began streaming this month, Nishijima plays Masa, an employee at a secretive robotics company in Japan as well as the husband to Suzie Sakamoto, an ********* expatriate played by Rashida Jones. When Masa and their son go missing, Suzie embarks on a quest to find out more about the company and the husband she thought she knew.

“In this show, there’s trust and betrayal,” Nishijima said in a video interview from Tokyo, where he lives with his family. “There’s technology that has a good side and a dangerous side. This show really explores how as a human sometimes you don’t even know who you are.”

He discussed the way he brings a bit of nature to his home, the thing he and his “Drive My Car” character have in common and the filmmaking book he keeps coming back to. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

1

Movie Theaters

When I was in my 20s and 30s, I wasn’t really working. I was an actor, but I wasn’t working. So I was going to the movies every day. In Tokyo, we could watch every movie in the world. I would watch two or three movies a day. Looking back, I treasure those moments. I was still doing something productive, and I feel like that kind of saved me in a sense. It helped me keep my sanity.

2

Decompressing Away From It All

I own a very small mountain cabin, and after I do an acting job I like to go there, especially during winter. I love just chopping wood and making a *****, and I don’t have to think about anything. When you’re acting, it’s really focused, and you can get very exhausted, so that time in the cabin is very valuable for me.

3

Martial Arts

You might know me from “Sunny” and “Drive My Car,” but in Japan I do a lot of hard action movies, so I want to be prepared for that, too. I would do a type of martial arts created by Bruce Lee.

4

Long Productive Drives

I like driving while listening to lines. If you remember “Drive My Car,” my character did that, too. Of course, I read scripts in my room as well, but I like listening to it repeatedly while I’m driving.

5

Mount Takao

This mountain is very close to where I’m from. So as a ****, I would go there alone. It’s sort of spiritual.

6

Cooking Tempura

What I like about tempura is that as soon as it comes to your plate, you want to eat it. I like serving it to my family as fast as they can eat it.

7

‘Notes on the Cinematograph’ by Robert Bresson

This book is about moviemaking and acting. I would read it a lot in my 20s and would mark it up. At one point I thought if I kept reading it too much, I wouldn’t actually be able to go act. But recently I’ve started reading it again. He has an interesting philosophy in the book that actors shouldn’t be acting. If you act thinking, “This must look real,” then it isn’t actually very real. He teaches that you have to just be there and present. Now I’m reading to know more about what he says and why he says it.

8

Gardening

I plant cucumbers with small tomatoes. I have some plants as well. I live in the middle of Tokyo — nature is not very easy to access, so I want something natural near my house. It gives me peace and the feeling that I’m caring for something.

9

Keeping Work and Life in Balance

Before I got married, I devoted all my time to acting. But now, even when I try to come home and remain in character, my family removes it from me. I actually see it as a good thing. I come home and see my boys — they’re 8 and 5 — and they talk about completely different things than work.

10

John Cassavetes

In 2000 in Tokyo, there was a big Cassavetes retrospective, and I watched “Husbands” (1970) and “Minnie and Moskowitz” (1971). I was so excited and overwhelmed that I couldn’t go home. I just kept bicycling around. When I went to Los Angeles for the Academy Awards, there was an hour of free time, and I wanted to see the tombstone of Cassavetes. I went to look and finally found it. That was a memorable moment in my life because 20 years ago I was an actor with no work and was impressed by Cassavetes’s work because he shows the real human.

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