Since his feature film debut at the age of six in the Japanese movie Game of Chance (1966), Hiroyuki Sanada has appeared in over seventy films in a career spanning over five decades. Some of his notable acting credits in Japanese cinema include House on Fire (1986), Sharaku (1995), the horror thriller Ring (1998) and the acclaimed historical drama The Twilight Samurai (2002).

The actor is perhaps best familiar to the international audience for his work in movies like Rush Hour 3 (2007), The Wolverine (2013), The Railway Man (2013) and Mr. Holmes (2015). More recently, Sanada was seen in the MCU superhero movie Avengers: Endgame (2019) and the neo-noir action thriller John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019). His other releases include Mortal Kombat (2021), Army of the Dead (2021) and Bullet Train (2022).