Chiaki Kuriyama

My character is somebody who is smaller in stature and yet who's strong, so to see the fighting situations between people who are not generally thought of being strong is in itself unusual and therefore interesting, I think.

I think the biggest difficulty is that when I'm here in America, there's a necessity of using English, so I really have a great sense of really wanting to learn, but unfortunately when I head back to Japan, the necessity vanishes and so does my enthusiasm about learning.

I need to have a quick wardrobe. Two or three blazers with dark gray pants, two pairs of jeans, two light blue shirts, a casual shirt, two pairs of shoes, one formal one not. Small accessories like Tod's Greca belt and our woven bracelets for a wild touch.

The thrill of a photo-realist painter is if you get really close to the painting, it looks just like a photograph. Whereas in my case, if you get close to my paintings, they totally fall apart - so I'm about as far from a photo-realist as it gets.