Naoko Iijima

Naoko Iijima (飯島直子, Iijima Naoko) is a Japanese television and film actress and a former gravure idol who was born on February 29, 1968 in Kōhoku-ku, a ward of the city of Yokohama in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan.

Life and career

Early career - Zero Woman

Iijima began her entertainment career in 1988 on the late night Jaspanese TV show 11 PM, followed by a number of appearances in commercials and as a Race Queen. An early cinema role was the December 1990 straight-to-video V-cinema drama Strawberry Times 4: Kisaragi San Shimai no Gyakushū (ストロベリータイムス４　如月三姉妹の逆襲) which also starred Risa Tachibana and Mari Ayukawa. The next year, she was featured in the comedy Funky Monkey Teacher (ファンキー・モンキー・ティーチャー, Fanki Monkī Tīchā) which was released to theaters by the Toei Company in December 1991. Over the next four years, Iijima starred in more than a dozen V-cinema productions as well as posing for gravure (non-nude) photobooks and performing in gravure videos.

In January 1995, Iijima was cast as the lead in the action feature film Zero Woman: Final Mission (Zero WOMAN　警視庁０課の女, Zero Woman: Keishichō 0-ka no onna), a revival of the Zero Woman character from Miki Sugimoto's 1974 film. Despite the title of this film, the Zero Woman franchise continued with a number of sequels. The film was released in an English-language version on VHS and DVD in May 2002 as Zero Woman: Final Mission.