Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on November 2010

IMAGE.NET

If Norika Fujiwara ever has a business card made, it’ll be a challenge to fit all her titles on it. In the past year alone, Fujiwara, 39, has been a voice actor for Shrek Forever After: The Final Chapter; reported from Sumatra for NHK’s Save the Future program; taken part in the COP10 biodiversity summit in Nagoya; modeled at a fashion show for the Miss Ashida brand; performed in stage musicals; and extolled the virtues of kiwis in her capacity as the “2010 Zespri Kiwifruit Image Character.”

Looking much younger than her age, Fujiwara was luminous at the recent Tokyo International Film Festival, where she walked the green carpet with Shrek (see page 25). In the series’ fourth film, which opens in Japan on December 12, Fujiwara voices the character of Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz in the original versions).

“I’ve been doing Fiona’s voice for nine years, and she’s a part of me now,” the actress said. “This is going to be the final movie in the series, so I didn’t hold anything back.”

Born in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, Fujiwara has been in show business since being crowned Miss Japan in 1992. She’s kept busy ever since, starring in commercials, hosting music TV shows, reporting from the Athens Olympics, and authoring two bestselling books, Fujiwara Shugi (“Fujiwara-isms”) and Norika Body. Most recently, she added stage musicals to her repertoire, with The Drowsy Chaperon and Cabaret. Next March, she will appear in a nationwide tour of the musical Marguerite, from the producers of the Broadway hit Les Miserables.

In between her theater and TV work, Fujiwara is in demand as a spokeswoman—since the summer, for instance, she’s been traveling around Japan and Asia as a kiwi ambassador. “Kiwifruit is very healthy and enhances the beauty of women,” she said.

In the TV commercials, Fujiwara holds green and gold types of the fruit, jumps on trampolines, and dives into water. The commercials were filmed in New Zealand, where she said she enjoyed picking the fruit herself. “I always want to be a golden girl,” she said, and recommended a drink made of kiwi, spinach, pear and amino collagen blended in a mixer. “You know what the enemy of a successful diet is? Yourself. There’s a lot of really delicious food here, but it’s important to conquer your impulses.”

Although Fujiwara has always been a darling of the media, reporters have kept their distance since her March 2009 divorce from Osaka-based comedian Tomonori Jinnai, whom she married in a high-profile ceremony in Kobe in February 2007. During a recent kiwi promotion, she said she hopes to fall in love again. “Of course, I’d like to always be in love. Women in love have a special glow.”

Meanwhile, Fujiwara said she is finding self-fulfillment with her involvement in charitable and environmental work. Over the past few years, she’s held a charity exhibit of photos that she took of children in Afghanistan, set up the Norika Fujiwara Fund to aid children’s education worldwide, founded girls’ primary schools in Afghanistan and Cambodia, and worked as a PR envoy for the Japan Red Cross. Asked what she does at home to be eco-friendly, she said, “I often use candles to save on electricity.”

Looking ahead, Fujiwara claims that she’s not daunted by turning 40 next year. “Even when I get older, I don’t want to lose my curiosity to take on new challenges in my work and personal life,” she said.

Chris Betros is the editor of Japan Today (www.japantoday.com).