Rinko Kikuchi's breathtakingly exquisite work in Babel, filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu's epic ode to the power of miscommunication, is one of those performances that come around only once in a great while. As Chieko, a deaf-mute Japanese teenager estranged from her father, Kikuchi beautifully conveys wounded adolescence, simmering rage, and volcanic sexuality in a way that is nothing short of revelatory. As Chieko wends her way through the bustling streets and discotheques of Tokyo, the actor makes us feel the character's painful isolation on a deep, gut-wrenching level. "The first time that I saw her, she was completely the character," Iñárritu recalls. "I thought she was deaf, because she was so isolated and her eyes were always in another place."
The 25-year-old native of Kanagawa, Japan, fell in love with movies and performing at an early age. "I have two older brothers who are just out there, and they are the ones who always [got] attention from our mother," she says, speaking through an interpreter. "Being a youngest sister, I [had] to do something to get attention from my mother. So I cried on purpose, I did something bad on purpose, I lied to her on purpose. And that is actually a little bit [like] acting." She also spent time learning the skills she saw her heroes using on the big screen -- such as horseback-riding and sword-fighting. At age 15, she started modeling and acting, appearing in Japanese movies such as Ikitai (Will to Live) and Sora no ana (Hole in the Sky). Babel is her first role in an American film, and one can't imagine that it will be her last.
For Kikuchi, this part represented the chance of a lifetime and the opportunity to work with one of her idols. "I grew up watching many films, and films were my education," she says. "And [two] of the movies were actually director Alejandro's movies: 21 Grams and Amores Perros. I respect him as a director very much. And I heard that he was casting a part in Japan, and I thought that would be probably the first and only chance I could get to not only work with him but meet him as well."
Though Iñárritu was impressed with Kikuchi from the beginning, she had to fight to play Chieko. The director was hoping to cast a hearing-impaired actor, and the grueling audition process ended up lasting nearly a year. Undaunted, Kikuchi threw herself into becoming the character. "I spent time with deaf students, and I actually lived not only with the deaf students but as a deaf [person]," she says. "I tried to find out what kind of clothes [Chieko] would wear, and I actually tried to wear the character's wardrobe. And then, also, she was a 16-year-old girl, and I gained a little weight to have a little baby fat."
She attended a high school for deaf students in Japan and learned sign language, though she notes that nonactor types in her native country were perplexed by this. "In Japan, it's kind of hard for regular people to [understand] an actor's work developing characters," she says. "So at first it was very hard for them to understand: Why do I want to attend this school? But there was one instructor from that particular school who understood my needs as an actor, and he kindly let me start taking classes."
In addition to building Chieko's backstory, spending time with hearing-impaired students also taught Kikuchi some life lessons. "Instead of a handicap, I take 'deaf' as a part of the person's identity," she says. "Those deaf students, they don't take it as they're handicapped either. They were bright, full of energy, and I gained a lot of positive perspective from them."
In the end, Kikuchi won the role about a week before Babel was set to start shooting. Having developed her character so fully during the audition process, she was more than ready. The process also gave her a chance to bond with Iñárritu, and the duo used a unique method of communicating on set. "By the time we [were shooting], we trusted each other and we understood each other without using a particular language," she says. "When we had to communicate, Alejandro was really careful for me not to lose the focus I'm using to play this character. So he asked me to communicate with sign language. So what we did was, I signed to someone who speaks Japanese and Japanese [was translated] to English and English to Spanish, and that's how we communicated."
And how was working with Iñárritu after dreaming of such an opportunity for so long? "It was more than I thought [it would be]; it was an unbelievable experience," she says. "I'm able to go and visit different countries, meet with different audiences internationally, and if I were just a Japanese actress who worked only in Japan, I wouldn't be here and I wouldn't have this great opportunity and I wouldn't be able to receive all these wonderful compliments that I've been getting."
