Aoi Miyazaki

Aoi Miyazaki (宮﨑 あおい) is a Japanese actress.

She is known for her roles in Nana and Virgin Snow.

Miyazaki started working in the entertainment industry at the age of four.

Initially she appeared mostly in commercials, magazine advertisements, and as an extra in television dramas.

Miyazaki made her film debut in Ano Natsu no Hi at the age of 14.

Also at the age of 14, Miyazaki began to draw international attention for her role as the survivor of a traumatic bus hijack in Shinji Aoyama's Eureka.

The film won the International Federation of Film Critics Prize at the Cannes Film Festival 2000, and resulted in her receiving the Best Actress award at the Japanese Professional Movie Awards.

She also made her musical debut in The Little Prince in 2003.

Later, Miyazaki won Best Actress award in the Cinemanila International Film Festival for her performance in Harmful Insect.

She teamed up with Aoyama again in Eli, Eli, Lema Sabachthani?, an Un Certain Regard selection at Cannes 2005.

Later in the same year, she co-starred with Mika Nakashima in the mainstream and commercially successful Nana.

She travelled with her older brother and fellow actor, Masaru Miyazaki, to Bangladesh in 2005 to experience poverty firsthand, and they highlighted the problems then found in their 2006 photobook Tarinai Peace.

The siblings travelled to Denmark and Finland in 2006 to investigate global warming.

Their experiences were then published in their 2007 photobooks Love, Peace, and Green Tarinai, Peace2.

Miyazaki married actor Sosuke Takaoka, her partner since she was fifteen, on 15 June 2007.

She won the Galaxy Individual Award for her performance in the NHK drama Atsuhime in 2008.

Miyazaki has appeared in commercials for major corporations including Aflac, Tokyo Metro, NTT DoCoMo and Olympus.

In early 2008, she was selected as Emporio Armani's new print advertisement model.

Miyazaki took part in the Gold Ribbon Walking event in Roppongi, Tokyo in 2008 to raise awareness and funds for childhood cancer.

Her 2008 film, Children of the Dark, addresses issues of child exploitation.

Miyazaki has been the face of the Japanese popular apparel brand Earth music&ecology since 2010.

In recent years, Miyazaki has taken a more prominent position in humanitarian activism projects.

They divorced in December 2011, with Takaoka subsequently accusing her of committing adultery on his Twitter account.

Miyazaki married singer Junichi Okada on 23 December 2017.

The couple jointly announced that they had welcomed the birth of their first child, a son, born May 2018.