Alice Hirose

The Shizuoka Festival

Alice Hirose never sought the spotlight. She was twelve years old when a talent scout approached her at a local festival in her hometown of Shizuoka in 2006. She was a girl devoted to basketball who barely paid attention to fashion. But that afternoon she agreed to step into the machinery of the Foster Management agency.

She started out in print. In 2009, she won the Miss Seventeen contest and became one of the regular faces of Seventeen magazine. She worked there for six years, sharing pages with her younger sister. And although modeling gave her solid experience, acting was always the real goal.

Hollywood doesn't hand out anything for free.

In 2010, she landed her first leading role on television in Akai Ito no Onna. It was a risky bet, since the series tackled adult and complex themes for an actress who was fifteen. But Hirose held her own through the daily shoot. That production taught her the discipline of the Japanese set, where delays don't exist.

The Farm and Its Secrets

The year 2014 brought a change of pace. She starred in the film adaptation of Silver Spoon. To play Aki Mikage, she had to learn horseback riding and spend weeks on real farms in Hokkaido. Audiences connected with her natural charm amid mud and animals.

And the gamble paid off.

Shortly after, in 2017, she headlined the cast of Hyouka: Forbidden Secrets alongside Kento Yamazaki. In this school mystery, she played Eru Chitanda. Fans of the original material were skeptical. But she managed to capture the character's obsessive curiosity without falling into anime caricature.

Her laugh is her best weapon.

Because Alice Hirose stands apart from other actresses with her almost aggressive expressiveness. She isn't afraid to contort her face for comedy. In 2018, she appeared in the NHK drama Warotenka. She played a manzai performer, and her performance of traditional comedy earned her the respect of veterans in the industry.

The 2024 Production Block

Her professional maturity came with long-running projects. In 2019, she joined the cast of Radiation House as rookie technician Hikaruko Hirose. The series was so successful that it returned for a second season in 2021 and a film in 2022. The franchise surpassed 12 viewer ratings points in several of its key episodes.

In 2024, her schedule filled with leading roles in prime-time slots. That April, she led the drama 366 Days for Fuji TV. The story is based on a song by the band HY and follows the reunion of two former high school classmates after twelve years of silence.

But it's not all television drama. In 2024, she also appeared in the film The Floor Plan, based on a viral internet phenomenon about houses with unsettling designs. The movie earned more than $30 million in its first weeks at the Japanese box office.

Alice Hirose also lends her voice to major foreign productions. In 2023, she handled the Japanese dubbing of the character Paris in the film Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. Her contract included an absolute confidentiality clause covering the dialogue until one week before the official premiere in Tokyo.