Keiko Matsuzaka started out as a glamorous ingenue who sang and acted. Her career didn't differ greatly from those of other late Showa Era (1926-89) idols, except that she gave in to the unflattering changes her body underwent after entering middle age. Most other actresses who are still working in their 50s try desperately to hold on to their youthful appeal.
Matsuzaka's fuller, dowdier figure makes perfect sense in the current six-part NHK drama series "Madonna Verde" (NHK-G, Tues., 10 p.m.), where she plays a 55-year-old widow who agrees to be a surrogate mother for her daughter's child.
Matsuzaka's Midori is the mother to end all mothers: Selfless, intuitive, cheerful to the point of being infantile. At one point she reveals to another character what she is doing for her daughter, who lost her own baby after undergoing surgery for uterine cancer, and the character declares her a "madonna"; in other words, the original virgin babymaker. And that's exactly what Midori (meaning "green," or, in Latin, verde) is. Having been made pregnant through the implantation of a fertilized egg, she achieves the hyper-glow of expecting motherhood without all that messy sex.