Daisuke Ryu was a Japanese actor born in Tokyo, Japan on 14 February 1957. He won the Japanese "best new actor" Blue ribbon award for his performance as the legendary warrior Oda Nobunaga in Akira Kurosawa's movie Kagemusha (The Shadow Warrior). Other notable performances include Saburo Ichimonji in the famous Kurosawa epic Ran and the legendary warrior monk Benkei in Sogo Ishii's critically acclaimed Gojoe (Gojō reisenki or The Spirit war chronicle).

He starred opposite Samantha Bond in the 1989 television serial The Ginger Tree, where he played Count Kentaro Kurihama. Based on the novel by Oswald Wynd, set in Japan at the turn of the century, it spans the period 1903 to the outbreak of the Second World War.