Anna Sawai fumbled her first audition. She was 11, newly settled in Tokyo after a childhood that had bounced from New Zealand to Hong Kong to the Philippines, when her mother found a listing for a stage production of Annie just a month after they arrived. She bombed. Then she filled the next year with dance and singing lessons, worked tirelessly with her mother, and nailed the second audition, going on to play the title role in a live Nippon Television broadcast.
“It was my first experience where I learned, if you want something, you really have to put your head in the game,” says Sawai, now 34, on a video call from her home in Tokyo. “You have to go straight through and commit to it.” Hard work, by her account, has never scared her, and that appetite for challenge has shaped every step since.
Her breakthrough came with Shogun, whose feudal-Japan intrigue she initially sought out precisely because it frightened her. Her turn as the highborn Toda Mariko earned Sawai her first Emmy, for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, and confirmed her as one of the most closely watched performers of her generation. That fearlessness, she says, has been vital as she moves into the cinematic chapter of her career.
The slate ahead is dense. On November 13, Sawai stars alongside Nicholas Hoult in David Leitch’s How to Rob a Bank, an eccentric heist movie whose criminals wear animal suits and post their crimes on YouTube. She also appears opposite Jeremy Allen White and Austin Butler in Henry Dunham’s Enemies, and in a coming-of-age dramedy from Josh Klausner titled (Saint) Peter, with Judy Greer, both awaiting release dates.
Perhaps most meaningful is the chance to embody a personal icon. Sawai will play Yoko Ono in Sam Mendes’s The Beatles, an ambitious four-film series set for 2028. For an actress who has built a career on choosing roles that scare her, stepping into the life of a figure as scrutinized as Ono reads less as a risk than as the logical next dare, another instance of putting her head in the game and going straight through.
