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Hulu’s extraordinary historical drama Shōgun, based on James Clavell’s 1975 novel of the same name, has taken the world by storm. A big chunk of the credit goes to Anna Sawai, who leads the show with an exceptional performance and magnetic screen presence.
The 10-episode series, which originally aired from Feb. 27, 2024, through to April 23, has been declared one of the finest seasons of television ever and became the first Japanese-language series to win a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series and smashed the record for the most awarded single season of television in Emmy history (it won a whopping 18 awards at the Sep. 15 ceremony).
As one of the show’s leading stars, Anna Sawai plays Toda Mariko, an intelligent, highborn woman based on Hosokawa Gracia, a member of the aristocratic Akechi family from the Sengoku period. Her superb performance earned her the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. In winning the award, Sawai became the first Japanese woman to win any Primetime Emmy Award and the first actress of Asian descent to win in that category.
Sawai’s performance in the show has shone the spotlight on her. Born on June 11, 1992, in Wellington, New Zealand, she began acting at 11 but rose to fame as one of the lead vocalists of the Japanese girl group Faky from 2013 until 2018 (their hit singles during Sawai’s time as a member included “When You Wish Upon a Star” and “Better Without You”). After returning to acting in 2018, she hasn’t looked back.
Given her growing fame, her fans’ curiosity about her has led to many questions about her, and we are here to answer one…
How tall is Anna Sawai?
One of the many questions fans have asked about Anna Sawai is how tall she is. Well, we have the answer to that.
According to Celebrity Heights, Sawai is 5′ ¾” or 154.3 centimeters tall. Her IMDb profile has rounded those figures up to a more manageable 5′ 1″ or 1.55 meters.
Her diminutive stature certainly hasn’t hindered her success, which looks set to continue for the foreseeable future after her star-making role in Shōgun.
Her growing filmography includes two movies — 2009’s Ninja Assassin and 2021’s F9 — but she’s more prominently featured on television. Her small screen credits comprise one 2007 episode of the Japanese daytime drama Our Love Song, two 2018 episodes of the Japanese streaming drama Colors, a lead role in six episodes of the British crime drama Giri/Haji, and ongoing lead roles in the American drama series Pachinko, the monster series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, and, of course, her role in Shōgun (per IMDb).