Kumi Mizuno

Kumi Mizuno (水野久美, Mizuno Kumi, January 1, 1937) is a Japanese film actress, most famous for appearing in several Toho kaiju films of the 1960s and early 1970s. 
Mizuno was active in drama club in high school, playing the heroine in the annual play three years in a row. She made her film debut at Shochiku in 1957. She also acted in films for Toho, but unlike most of her colleagues she was not under an exclusive contract. Mizuno is popular among genre fans for her bewitching looks, especially in films such as Matango (1963), Monster Zero (1965), and Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster (1966, of MST3K fame). Her American co-star from Monster Zero, Nick Adams, was rumored to have had an affair with her, and he allegedly asked her to marry him. She enjoyed appearing in sci-fi, and appeared in two of the Millennium Godzilla films, including the 50th anniversary film Godzilla: Final Wars (2004).
== Career ==
Mizuno was born Maya Igarashi on January 1, 1937 in Sanjō, Niigata Prefecture, Japan. She was acquainted with Giant Baba, her junior by one year, who is also from Sanjō. She enrolled and eventually graduated from an acting school and began a professional career in film in 1957 in The Unbalanced Wheel (Shochiku). In 1958, Mizuno appeared in The Spell of the Hidden Gold (Toho). 
Her most famous roles include Miss Namikawa in Invasion of Astro-Monster, Dr. Sueko Togami in Frankenstein Conquers the World, and the island girl Dayo in Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster. She is also known for her role as Azami in the 1959 epic The Birth of Japan. By the time she started working on A Bridge for Us Alone (1958), her second movie, her name had changed to Kumi Mizuno. Mizuno first worked with director Ishirō Honda in Seniors, Juniors, Co-Workers in 1959. She would later work with Honda in Attack of the Mushroom People, Frankenstein Conquers the World, Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster, Gorath, Invasion of Astro-Monster and The War of the Gargantuas.
In 1991, she played Kanako Yanagawa in Kihachi Okamoto's Rainbow Kids.
Mizuno returned to the kaiju genre for 2002's Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla, and again for 2004's Godzilla: Final Wars.
== Filmography ==
* All films on IMDB