Early Life and Pre-fame
Born in Tokyo, Kimura lived in Minoh, Osaka until he was six years old. Then, he lived and attended elementary school and junior high school in Chiba. One of his relatives sent in the application to the Johnny & Associates talent agency, which specializes in young male teen idols, and he became a member of Johnny's Juniors, a group of trainees, in 1987. Then he became one of the 12 members in a unit called "Skate Boys". Skate Boys used to be backup dancers of Hikaru Genji, which at the time was a very popular group. In 1988, SMAP was created, and he joined. The group then consisted of six members: Masahiro Nakai, Takuya Kimura, Goro Inagaki, Katsuyuki Mori, Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, Shingo Katori; Katsuyuki Mori later left SMAP to pursue an autoracing career in the mid 90s. After SMAP was formed, each member pursued an individual career by starring in B-list television dramas. Their first single "Can't Stop!! Loving" was released in 1991, but it received mixed reviews.
Read more about this topic: Takuya Kimura
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Very early in our children’s lives we will be forced to realize that the “perfect” untroubled life we’d like for them is just a fantasy. In daily living, tears and fights and doing things we don’t want to do are all part of our human ways of developing into adults.”
—Fred Rogers (20th century)
“The sentiment of virtue is a reverence and delight in the presence of certain divine laws. It perceives that this homely game of life we play, covers, under what seem foolish details, principles that astonish.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)