Mickey Curtis

Who is Mickey Curtis?

Mickey Curtis is a Japanese actor, singer, and TV celebrity. His birth name was Michael Brian Curtis born to an English-Japanese father and English-Japanese mother.

A pivotal figure in Japanese popular music, Mickey is considered one of the three big Japanese names in rock music, helping to popularise the genre in the 1950s where he began as a rockabilly singer. In 1967 he became internationally known for his avant-garde rock band "Mickey Curtis & The Samurai". After five years Mickey disbanded the group and returned to Japan in 1972, where he began producing other musicians.

As an actor his first role was as a rock singer in the 1958 film All About Marriage by Kihachi Okamoto, and has since gone on to star in more than 70 feature films. At over 70 years of age he is one of the oldest major celebrities in Japan and a regular TV personality. Apart from his entertainment career he has also been a racecar driver and owns a motorcycle shop in Meguro, Tokyo. He speaks Japanese, English, French, German, Italian and Thai.