One of the absolute titans of the Japanese film industry and the absolute image that jumps to mind when you hear the word samurai, Toshirô Mifune was—funnily enough—actually born in China. This tidbit notwithstanding, Mifune and frequent collaborator Akira Kurosawa helped to define Japanese cinema during its golden age through films like Rashomon (1950), The Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of Blood (1957), The Hidden Fortress (1958), Yojimbo (1961), Sanjuro (1962), and perhaps their finest collaboration High and Low (1963). Mifune didn't work exclusively with the director—only 16 of his 180-plus screen appearances came in Kurosawa films—and one of his more notable non-Kurosawa films was Red Sun (1971), which he starred in opposite two other international superstars Charles Bronson and Alain Delon, and was directed by frequent early Bond director Terence Young! Though Mifune never appeared nude on film, he does go shirtless for a bath and shows off his buns in a sumo wrestling mawashi!
