Gackt

With the emerging news surrounding the upcoming film BUNRAKU starring Josh Hartnett, the real question that comes to mind is, “Who is Gackt?” Gackt, a popular Japanese musician who will make his Hollywood debut in the film, has done only one other film, the Japanese vampire-drama MOON CHILD.

Gackt was born Gakuto Oshima on July 4, 1971 in Okinawa, Japan. At the age of three, his parents forced the young boy to take up the piano. Having no interest in playing the piano, Gackt had tried to give up on numerous occasions. That was, until he found a worthy opponent in a fellow piano player who was better than him. Determined to best his foe, Gackt trained hard in the piano and he eventually got so good at it that he started learning other musical instruments through the next decade or two.

In 1995, Gackt was asked to become the new lead singer of the “visual kei” band Malice Mizer. Combining heavy metal with 18th-Century French classical music, Malice Mizer achieved their biggest success with Gackt as the lead singer. Gackt would go on to leave the band in 1999 to pursue a very successful solo career.

It was around the time when he was getting major impact in his solo career that he revealed his passion for the martial arts. Gackt is a practitioner of karate and in an interview on the popular Japanese music show HEY! HEY! HEY! MUSIC CHAMP, he revealed that in his studio, he has a punching bag next to his piano. It is probably just to get some aggression out when he has writer’s block, who knows. Furthermore, during a performance of one of his songs on the show, he staged a fight scene between himself and two masked warriors during the instrumental solo of the song.

In 2003, Gackt began to work on his first screenplay with help from former adult film director Takahisa Zeze. The story would revolve around the trials and tribulations of a decades-long friendship between a neo-gangster and a vampire. The result was MOON CHILD, a film that scored big in Japan and starred Gackt as the gangster, with Hyde (lead singer of J-Rock band L’Arc-en-Ciel) as the vampire and CHINA STRIKE FORCE’s Wang Leehom as a Chinese refugee who becomes friends with the duo only to end up joining the Triads. The film featured some frenetic bullet balletic scenes and in an attempt to spoof martial arts, Gackt throws a 360-degree butterfly kick only to miss his opponent and nearly break his leg, giving some comic relief to the action scene.

Gackt was worked not only in music, but has done anime such as FIST OF THE NORTH STAR, and gained acclaim for his role as samurai warlord Kenshin Uesugi in the 2007 series FURIN KAZAN. It was his role in this series that got him noticed by newcomer director Guy Moshe.

Moshe is the force behind BUNRAKU, a new film that combines martial arts action, Japanese puppetry, origami, and more with a taste of the graphic novel SIN CITY. Gackt plays Yoshi, a samurai warrior who becomes the sidekick of “The Drifter”, the main protagonist played by Josh Hartnett. Demi Moore and Ron Perlman, who is best known as HELLBOY, co-star.

Should BUNRAKU be a hit film come 2009, Gackt may have his ticket to America and who knows, if the film world doesn’t work out, he will always have his music to fall back on.

Official Website: http://www.gackt.com

SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY
2009 – Bunraku
2003 – Moon Child (actor/writer)