Tadanobu Asano was born in Yokohama to a Japanese father, Yukihisa and mother, Junko of Japanese and European ancestry. His maternal grandfather, Willard N. Overing, was from Winona, Minnesota. Willard's father Jacob was Dutch and his mother Ellabel was Norwegian. Described by some as a cross between Johnny Depp and Toshirô Mifune, Asano Tadanobu is certainly the hippest, if not the single most important, Japanese film actor working today.