About Maaya Sakamoto
Maaya Sakamoto (坂本 真綾, Sakamoto Maaya; born March 31, 1980) is a Japanese actress and singer. She made her debut as a voice actress in 1992 as the voice of Chifuru in the anime Little Twins, and became known as the voice of Hitomi Kanzaki in The Vision of Escaflowne. Other major anime roles include Haruhi Fujioka in Ouran High School Host Club, Shiki Ryōgi in The Garden of Sinners, Ciel Phantomhive in Black Butler, Crona in Soul Eater, Leila Malcal in Code Geass: Akito the Exiled, Motoko Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell: Arise, Merlin in The Seven Deadly Sins, Eto in Tokyo Ghoul, and Echidna in Re:Zero − Starting Life in Another World. In video games, she has voiced Aerith Gainsborough in the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII series, Aigis in Persona 3, Lightning in the Final Fantasy XIII games, the adult Sherry Birkin in Resident Evil, and Maki Harukawa in Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony. In the Japanese-dubbed versions of international films, Sakamoto has voiced Padmé Amidala in the Star Wars franchise and Rosalina in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. Sakamoto has performed songs in both English and Japanese. She released her debut single, "Yakusoku wa Iranai", in collaboration with Yoko Kanno under Victor Entertainment on April 24, 1996. Her singles "Tune the Rainbow", "Loop", "Ame ga Furu", and "Triangler" have all reached the top 10 Oricon singles chart: "Triangler" in particular charted at number 3 and remained charting for 26 weeks. Her albums have had similar success, with Shōnen Alice and Yūnagi Loop both reaching the top 10 Oricon albums chart; and her album You Can't Catch Me, released on January 12, 2011, became her first release to ever reach number 1. She held a concert at the Nippon Budokan on her 30th birthday.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.