Chinen is the son of Takashi Chinen, a former Japanese gymnast who won a bronze medal in the 1992 Summer Olympics.[3] He is named after Yuri Osawa, an announcer, whose name his mother liked, but is written with different characters; the yu is a character often used in girl's names (侑 Yū) and the ri is taken from Li (李), a surname his mother thought common among Chinese gold medalist gymnasts.[4]
Career
On June 2, 2003, Chinen entered Johnny & Associates as a trainee. Daiki Arioka, who would later also debut as a member of Hey! Say! JUMP, was also there during that time. On April 3, 2007, he began activities with the temporary group, Hey! Say! 7 starting with a public performance at a KAT-TUN concert.[5]
On September 21, 2007, he made his debut as a member of Hey! Say! JUMP.[6]
On March 2, 2010, a press release made by Johnny and Associates revealed that Chinen and Yamada would become members of a second Johnny's unit, NYC. They worked as a member of both Hey! Say! JUMP and NYC, which is a rarity in their talent agency. Ryo Nishikido (and formerly Uchi Hiroki) is the only such case of a Johnny's talent officially debuting in two groups (Kanjani8 and NEWS), and as NYC became an officially debuted Johnny's unit, Yamada and Chinen joined them in this unusual situation.
In September 2011, he played the voice of Brainy in the Japanese-dubbed version of the film The Smurfs.[8] Hey! Say! JUMP's ninth single, "Magic Power", was used as the theme song for the film.
In January 2012, Chinen co-starred with his senpaiTomohisa Yamashita in a drama called Saiko no Jinsei no Owarikata: Ending Planner, in which he played Yamashita's younger brother. Chinen's character in the drama was a university student who was so focused on helping out a friend to the point of stealing money from his family's business. Atsuko Maeda and Nana Eikura joined the cast.
In June 2012, It was announced that Chinen would have his first lead-role drama series based on the manga Sprout, by Atsuko Nanba, on July 7 on NTV.[9]
Filmography
Shows
Merengue no Kimochi (with Ryosuke Yamada, NTV, October 11, 2008)
^"スクラップ・ティーチャー／教師再生" [Scrap Teacher]. Dijitaru Daijisen (in Japanese). Tokyo: Shogakukan. 2012. OCLC56431036. Archived from the original on August 25, 2007. Retrieved December 14, 2012.
