Yuriko Yoshitaka

Yuriko Yoshitaka is a Japanese actress born on July 22, 1988. She has established a career across television and film, earning wide recognition for her performances in feature films such as Snakes and Earrings and Yurigokoro, as well as her starring role in the NHK morning drama series Hanako to Anne.

Yoshitaka entered the entertainment field after being discovered by a talent scout at the age of 16 while shopping in Harajuku during her initial year of high school. She officially made her screen acting debut in 2006. The following year, she landed her breakthrough role as the character Lui in the live-action movie adaptation of Hitomi Kanehara's novel Snakes and Earrings, which portrays a teenager's life changing after meeting a tattooed man named Ama. While preparing for this project in September 2007, she survived a major traffic accident that left her with a broken jaw and required a five-day stay in an intensive care unit.

Following her breakthrough, Yoshitaka's career expanded rapidly in 2008. She appeared in the music video for the song Arigatō by the group Flow, secured her first starring role in the television comedy Konno-san to Asobo, and took the lead in the film Yubae Shōjo prior to the nationwide release of Snakes and Earrings. Public interest in her grew substantially around this time. Industry tracking by Oricon ranked her as the fifth most promising young actress and the freshest female celebrity of 2009, and she subsequently reached the top spot on Oricon's most promising actress poll in 2010.

Her television work continued to flourish in 2009 with her portrayal of the suicidal character Kairi Hayakawa in the romantic-comedy drama Love Shuffle. Later that year, she co-starred alongside Shun Oguri and Hiro Mizushima as Yūki Matsunaga in the police drama Tokyo Dogs. In 2010, she displayed her versatility by playing all three sister roles in the short drama project Tofu Shimai. That same year, it was announced in May that she had been selected for her first lead role in a major network television series, Mioka, in which she portrayed a college student suffering from an untreatable medical condition.

In 2011, Yoshitaka appeared as Tae Kojima in the two-part film adaptation of the sci-fi action series Gantz. She also headlined director Kōji Maeda's feature film Konzen Tokkyū, playing a young woman who dates several men simultaneously to choose a husband, which debuted in theaters in the spring of 2011.

One of Yoshitaka's most prominent television achievements occurred in 2014, when she starred as Hanako Muraoka in Hanako to Anne. The broadcast, which ran from March 31 to September 27, 2014, marked the 90th Asadora drama presented by NHK. Concluding that milestone year, Yoshitaka served as a co-host for the 65th NHK Kōhaku Uta Gassen television special on New Year's Eve alongside the music group Arashi.