RINKO KIKUCHI, actor, photographed in Nakano, Tokyo, Japan.
Rinko Kikuchi is a woman of few words. But, as the 26-year-old Japanese actress proved in her Academy Award-nominated turn as a deaf-mute in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s sprawling 2006 epic,
Babel, reticence is a virtue. Kikuchi conveys more unfettered emotion with her haunting, deep-set brown eyes, framed by that angular black mane, than any inflected, histrionic actress of her generation. In next month’s rollicking crime caper,
The Brothers Bloom, starring Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel Weisz, the seasoned motorcyclist and sword-fighter again minces few words as Bang Bang, a feisty con artist who, appropriately, loves to blow things up. Taking a break from filming her next movie in Bangkok, Thailand, the face of Chanel’s 2008 Cruise collection says of her style, “I wear what I want to wear depending on how I’m feeling. I love YSL, Alexander McQueen and Martin Margiela.” And despite wholly embracing vintage outfits from the 1960s and 1970s, she looks equally stunning in more quirky fare. Of her most outrageous ensemble, she says, smiling, “That would have to be my red and white bodysuit.”
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