Mari Yamamoto

Mari Yamamoto is a Japanese actress and journalist. Born in Japan, she moved with her family to London in 1991 and returned to 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 studied international relations at the International Christian University in Tokyo, earning a 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 part of The Bats acting company at The Flea Theater. She returned to Tokyo 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 led to Yamamoto being recruited to work on the show's writing staff. She became 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 joined 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*.