Word: chieko
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Rinko Kikuchi's breakthrough performance as Chieko, a deaf-mute teenager in Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel, was so convincing that co-star Cate Blanchett at first assumed the 26-year-old Japanese actress really couldn't speak. It's the kind of talent that has propelled Kikuchi from obscurity to an Oscar nomination-the first for a Japanese actress in 49 years. Kikuchi talks to Time's Michiko Toyama about Babel, isolation and her newfound fame...
...uncertainty about whether you'd get the part. Alejandro told me he would give me the role only a week before shooting began, which if I think about it now is quite amazing. [Laughs.] He initially wanted a real deaf girl for the role of Chieko. I fully understood that, but I was also trying to find what I could bring into the role as an actress. I was constructing the character of Chieko, feeling how she would have felt...
...would you sum up Chieko's very complex character? Chieko is open and blunt, and always edgy. Her anger, passion, the distance from her father, the loss of her mother-she is dealing with all these problems and is always looking for someone to be hugged by, not necessarily sexually, but for some warmth...
...Babel features the first nude scene of your career. How did you cope with it? The scene is one where Chieko is seeking something fundamental. It's not that she is looking for sex, but that sex is the only means she has to keep the guy, and she can't help doing it. Chieko had no other way of communication, and I felt her despair. I knew from the beginning that there was going to be such a scene, but the nudity was handled so beautifully that I wasn't concerned and tried to be professional...
...that there was going to be such a scene. After all, actors cry, laugh or do love scenes in front of an audience, and you have to use everything as an actor. I find that nudity is merely beautiful, and especially in the film it was created so beautifully... Chieko had no other way of communication, and I felt her despair...