Ken Watanabe's latest film opens with an image of a polar bear resurfacing into the brilliant spring sunlight after months living underground. It's tempting to see the scene as a metaphor for a career that has alternated between stretches of intense, highly acclaimed work and long periods of hibernation.

The 48-year-old was famously forced into semiretirement by a leukemia diagnosis in 1989, just two years after NHK's samurai television series "Dokuganryu Masamune" launched him to fame. He fought the disease into remission, but it returned in 1994, leaving another five-year hole in his resume.

Watanabe is now re-emerging, blinking in the media spotlight after another year away from the cameras — this time self-imposed — following a string of high-profile Hollywood performances that have made him perhaps the best-known, most respected Asian actor on the planet.