Mari Yamamoto

Acting

Mari Yamamoto

Born 1986-02-04 · Tokyo, Japan

Mari Yamamoto is a Japanese actress and journalist. Born in Japan, Yamamoto would move with her family to London in 1991, before eventually returning to live in Tokyo in 1994 at the age of 8. She described the experience as akin to being an outsider, where she'd be considered "very Japanese everywhere in the world" but "wasn’t quite Japanese enough" in Japan itself. Yamamoto would study international relations at the International Christian University in Tokyo, where she would obtain her Bachelor of Arts, before moving to New York City to study method acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute. During this time she was also part of The Bats acting company at The Flea Theater. She returned to Tokyo following this, and began working in journalism, writing articles for The Daily Beast alongside American journalist Jake Adelstein. Adelstein's book Tokyo Vice was being adapted into a television series for HBO Max, which would see Yamamoto recruited to work on the show's writing staff. She would become a producer on the series in its second season. In 2022, Yamamoto starred in a recurring role in the Apple TV+ series Pachinko as Hana. That same year she would join the cast of Apple's Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. In March 2024, she was cast to star opposite Brendan Fraser in the film Rental Family.

Acting credits

Rental Family poster
7.7

An American actor in Tokyo struggles to find purpose until he lands an unusual gig: working for a Japanese 'rental family' agency, playing stand-in roles for strangers. As he immerses himself in his clients' worlds, he begins to form genuine bonds that blur the lines between performance and reality.

Rental Family

2025

Kate poster
6.6

A ruthless criminal operative has less than 24 hours to exact revenge on her enemies and in the process forms an unexpected bond with the daughter of one of her past victims.

Kate

2021

Allure poster
6.0

Based on true stories, ALLURE is a process-driven film, where filmmakers and actors worked together through a series of improvisations to tell the stories of five women in New York, who come from five very different countries. Each one struggles to overcome her personal conflict, set against the Occupy Wall Street movements of 2011. These stories touch and inform each other, and create a larger narrative about gender, emigration, power, class, and personal politics.

Allure

2014

Story Game poster
5.9

Who can tell the scariest story? Three friends try to out wit each other on a camping trip in Hawaii. But only one can win The Story Game.

Story Game

2022

Surfer's Paradise poster
NR

A human invited to live in the company of AI struggles between divided loyalties.

Surfer's Paradise

2019

Not to Be Unpleasant But We Need to Have a Serious Talk poster
NR

Womanizer Aris finds out he is a carrier of a sexually transmitted virus, lethal only for women. But he is also the only hope for a curing vaccine if he finds which one of his ex girlfriends had the first viral strain.

Not to Be Unpleasant But We Need to Have a Serious Talk

2021

Bourek poster
6.6

In this humanistic comedy, set against the backdrop of economic crises and bad news, an extravagant international cast of characters meet, fight, and fall in love, while hiding from the end of the world and other calamities on the tiny Greek island of Khronos.

Bourek

2016

Jimami Tofu poster
NR

A Chinese Singaporean chef, formerly working in Tokyo, finds himself in Okinawa begging a disgruntled old chef to teach him traditional Okinawan food. A top Japanese food critic finds herself in Singapore on an eye opening discovery of Southeast Asian cuisine. In reality both are looking for each other after an emotional breakup years ago. Emotionally crippled by their breakup he searches her home-town for her but discovers instead the art of traditional Okinawan food. Through it he learns the incredible balance of two cultures: Chinese and Japanese - a balance they never had in their relationship. When she suddenly appears in Okinawa looking to find closure he cooks and serves her their final meal. Through it she discovers what she had been yearning for all these years.

Jimami Tofu

2018

Coin Lunch poster
NR

Jeff is a salaryman trying to fit into the hierarchy of the japanese workplace. But when his wife cuts his daily budget, jeff’s life begins a downward spiral, leaving him to choose what he needs more: his job or his family.

Coin Lunch

2018

The Last Dream poster
5.8

In a future where people have lost the ability to dream, a company has made a business out of recycling precious fantasies of the few that can still produce them. A model employee, Khalil, is one of the top performers until one day, his dreams are no longer to the liking of the company.

The Last Dream

2017