Born in Tokyo in 1985, Aya Ueto rose to fame as a teen idol before establishing herself as a versatile leading actress on Japanese television. She headlined the cult manga adaptation Azumi (2003) as an assassin trained from childhood, and its 2005 sequel. On television she led the hit series Attention Please (2006) about a rock-fan flight attendant, and starred in the historical drama Ace Attorney (2012) alongside Hiroki Narimiya. She has since fronted numerous NTV and TBS prime-time dramas as steady, principled heroines. Bright, hardworking and reliably central to a cast, she is a durable presence of the Japanese small screen.