Youki Kudoh is a farmer. She also happens to be an internationally acclaimed actress who has accomplished what few Japanese actors or actresses have managed before or since: make it in Hollywood. In particular her staring role in the 1999 film “Snow Falling on Cedars” opposite Ethan Hawke and a scene-stealing performance as the young geisha “Pumpkin” in Rob Marshall’s 2005 blockbuster “Memoirs of a Geisha” have brought her work to a wide international audience and established her as one of the most promising young Japanese actresses working in film today.

But for the moment, none of that seems to matter. Having taken a break from auditioning for roles in Los Angeles where she lived for years Kudoh has moved back to Japan and spends most of her time settling into a new home in Shizouka Prefecture at the foot of Mt. Fuji where she tends to her large rice and vegetable fields.

“Right now my priority is more being into farming than being an actress,” Kudoh said in a recent interview in Tokyo. “But you know, an actress’ work is a lifetime experience. When I find a good movie I have to work very hard, but I don’t have to work all the time. So for now I have my veggies. I am growing my rice. It is a wonderful life.”

Kudoh has not left the film industry however, and this year she has been invited to the 19th Annual Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) as a member of the jury that will be considering the films in competition. She made her first appearance on behalf of the Festival at the opening press conference held at Roppongi Hills on July 31 where she helped present the Akira Kurosawa award to this year's winner, the director Kon Ichikawa.

It's all heady stuff for this young actress who despite her recent turn to agriculture still has a long career, and a lot of hard work, to look forward. It is also something of a reversal of roles for Kudoh. At the inaugural TIFF in 1985 her performance as a young schoolgirl coming of age with five classmates in the midst of a savage summer storm in Shinji Somai’s “Typhoon Club” brought her to the attention of international critics and directors as well as the festival’s jury, which awarded the film the Young Cinema Grand Prize.

TIFF is only one year shy of its 20th anniversary, and this year has seen efforts by organizers to make the event more relevant to the international film community with the hope that it will finally take its place among the world’s great festivals. Kudoh is a member of a new generation of ambitious and talented young people that will actually make that happen, bringing to the event a global, but still distinctly Japanese, point of view.

“"I have experienced many different movie festivals in my career,” says Kudoh, “but this is Tokyo’s film festival, this is a Japanese festival. And one of the reasons I really love this festival is that it is Japanese. I hope we can create something that a lot of people will enjoy, something that is special for people all over the world who will come here and recognize what Tokyo and Japan can offer.”

Kudoh's reasons for joining a growing trend that has seen hundreds of young Japanese leave their comfortable lives in sprawling metropolises to do backbreaking agricultural work in the countryside might as well be her reason for taking some time off from farming to participate in this year’s TIFF. “The most important thing is to both work hard and stay rooted,” she says. “You know, the film industry is pretty much always up in the air. You are floating and flying on the time, not knowing which way you are going and just waiting for the next breeze to come along and carry you away. Because of that, it is important to keep your feet on the ground, stay connected to the earth, be stable, and always keep in mind what is most important.”