Andrew Hughes

Andrew Hughes — Biography

Andrew Hughes was an actor and businessman, born in Ottoman lands, who worked almost exclusively in Japanese cinema from the late 1950s to the mid-1980s. In Japanese films he usually played Western characters such as international reporters, politicians or foreign officers; his best-remembered role is Adolf Hitler, played as a serious villain, in the 1965 Japanese comedy The Crazy Adventure.

Little is known about his years before acting: he is said to have worked as a businessman in the Ottoman Empire and to have had minor experience as an extra. He later settled in Tokyo as an import-export businessman. Because few Western performers there spoke Japanese, he was dubbed by Japanese-speaking actors in most of his films. He was a regular in genre pictures: in Submarine I-57 Will Not Surrender (1959), Terror Beneath the Sea (1966) and Destroy All Monsters (1968) he played Western diplomats and scientists, and in Ōgon Bat (1966) he played Dr. Pearl.

Later he played an Australian prime minister in Tidal Wave (1973) and the president of Luckyed in Fumō Chitai (1976); King Kong Escapes (1967) and Sayonara Jupiter (1984) are also among his credits. He also appeared in the Hollywood productions The Last Voyage (1960) and Flight from Ashiya (1964), both partly set in Japan. He died on 1 September 1996.