Yūya Yagira
柳楽 優弥
Yagira at theTokyo International Film Festival in 2022
Born	(1990-03-26)March 26, 1990 (age 35) Tokyo, Japan
Occupation	Actor
Years active	2003–present
Agent	Stardust Promotion
Spouse	Ellie Toyota [ja] ​ ​ (m. 2010)​
Children	1

Yuya Yagira (柳楽 優弥,Yagira Yūya; born March 26, 1990) is a Japanese actor. In 2004, he became theyoungest winner of theCannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor^[1] for his portrayal of 12-year-old Akira in the highly acclaimedNobody Knows.^[2]

Yagira was 12 years old and not a professional actor, when filming began forNobody Knows in 2002.^[3] He then immediately went on to television projects and other films. He co-starred withEriko Sato in Akane Yamada'sAll to the Sea which was released in 2010^[4] and co-starred withKie Kitano in Taro Hyugaji'sUnder the Nagasaki Sky, released in 2013.^[5]

In 2021, Yagira played youngTakeshi Kitano in the biopicAsakusa Kid.

Yagira was hospitalized on August 29, 2008 for adrug overdose, with early reports calling it asuicide attempt.^[6][7] Yagira later denied that he had been trying to kill himself, noting that he was the one who called an ambulance after he began feeling ill from taking the pills.  According to his blog:

"The incident followed an argument with my family. In a fit of anger I took a larger than usual dosage of my prescription tranquilizers.
As a result I felt ill and asked for an ambulance to be called."^[6]

In December 2, 2009, Yagira announced on his blog that he was engaged to television personalityEllie Toyota [ja].^[8] On January 15, 2010, Yagira and Toyota held their wedding ceremony at Tokyo's Meiji Shrine. They had registered their marriage on January 14.^[9] They have one daughter together, born October 13, 2010.^[10]

The two met when Toyota was a senior atHorikoshi High School, and Yagira, who was instantly smitten after meeting her, asked a classmate for her contact information, which is how the two began dating.^[11] Yagira also revealed that he had proposed to her when he was seventeen.^[12] He was not aware at that time that people could not legally marry until they were eighteen, and so Toyota rejected his proposal.^[12] Yagira later proposed again two years later when he was nineteen, to which this time Toyota accepted.^[13]

In 2018, Yagira became the brand ambassador for Japanese men's grooming brand GATSBY.^[14] He starred in the TV Commercial "GATSBY Cop", together with popular Japanese actorMackenyu Arata.^{[citation needed]}

• Official website
• Yuya Yagira atIMDb

• 1990 births
• Living people
• 21st-century Japanese male actors
• Japanese male child actors
• Japanese male film actors
• Male actors from Tokyo
• People from Western Tokyo
• Stardust Promotion artists
• Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor winners
• Asia Contents Awards & Global OTT Awards winners
• Horikoshi High School alumni

• CS1 Japanese-language sources (ja)
• CS1 uses Japanese-language script (ja)
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles with hCards
• Articles containing Japanese-language text
• All articles with unsourced statements
• Articles with unsourced statements from March 2025