During the '50s and '60s, Masayuki Mori was rivaled only by Toshiro Mifune as Japan's most respected actor. A novelist's son, Mori was educated at Kyoto University and began his acting career on-stage. Mori made his film debut in Akira Kurosawa's Tora no o wa Fumu Otokotachi (The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail) (1945). In the West, the elegant Mori was best known for playing the victim to executed killer Toshiro Mifune in Kurosawa's classic Rashomon (1950), as the heartless lover in Mikio Naruse's Ukigummo (Floating Clouds) (1955), and most of all, for playing the magical potter in Kenjii Mizoguchi's Ugetsu Monogatari (Ugetsu) (1953). Mori died of rectal cancer in 1973. A '90s Japanese producer of the same name is not related to the late actor.