Julie Dreyfus is an
actress originally from
France. She has lived in
Japan most of her life and speaks perfect
Japanese, which she used to great effect in her (so far) best-known role, that of Sofi Fatale, O-Ren Ishii's attorney and interpreter, in
Kill Bill: Volume 1. Before that, she appeared in a number of Japanese TV shows and French movies, as well as in the original
pilot of
Mulholland Drive.
Dreyfus is an excellent example of a gaijin tarento, a foreigner who makes money in the Japanese market by acting dramatically... well, foreign. As an example, I recently saw her as a judge on Iron Chef, where a truly badass Osakan guy (Kandagawa Toshiro) was taking on Iron Chef French Sakai Hiroyuki and the ingredient was, of all things, lotus root. Kandagawa, just to be cool, busted out the tongue of a whale and made soup out of it. When I saw him slicing the tongue (a big white thing several feet long), I figured he had the matchup in the bag.
Then Julie Dreyfus was offered the whale tongue and lotus root soup, and she refused to eat it, saying "I'm sorry, I know it's probably good, but I can't eat this!" She went on to basically give Sakai the victory, and her rating of the challenger was several points lower than everyone else's.
I mean, sure, she's French, and she probably has a better concept of French food than the average Japanese person... but come on. She could have at least tried the stuff. Lameness like that is what occasionally makes me ashamed to be white.