Print & TV endorsement Apart from modeling for photobooks, Horikita has appeared in magazines and television advertisements. She is best remembered for her television commercials for
Fujifilm (where she appeared alongside
Japanese idol Tomoya Nagase) and
Lotte. She is also a staple image endorser for
Suntory and NTT DoCoMo. In 2008, Nihon Monitor recognized Horikita as one of Japan's top endorsers during its annual
Most Popular Personality in TV CMs.
Acting Horikita had been cast in several drama series and movies since 2003 but her roles in
Densha Otoko and
Nobuta wo Produce became her breakthrough performances. Her promising portrayal of the titular character in
Nobuta wo Produce won her a Best Supporting Actress award from Japan's Television Academy Awards. It was also around this time that she won the Newcomer Award from
Japan Academy Awards for her role as a student apprentice in
Always: Sunset on Third Street. In the following year, she won her second Best Supporting Actress award for her role in
Kurosagi. Months later, she was given the lead role for
Teppan Shoujo Akane!! and the role of a bully who is behind a class rebellion in
Seito Shokun! where she co-starred with her agency senior
Rina Uchiyama. She was also cast in the horror movie,
One Missed Call: Final, the last installment of the
One Missed Call franchise with agency colleague and best friend
Meisa Kuroki and South Korean actor
Jang Keun-suk. Soon after, Horikita was awarded her first Best Actress award for her role as Mizuki Ashiya in the Japanese drama adaptation of the
gender-bender manga
Hana-Kimi, or
Hanazakari no Kimitachi e. In the same year that
Hana Kimi was filmed, Horikita also starred in the
Taiga drama Atsuhime with
Aoi Miyazaki. In the same year, she played the lead character who has
multiple personality disorder in the suspense movie
Tokyo Shōnen and reprised her role as a student apprentice in
Always: Zoku Sanchome no Yuhi, the sequel to her breakthrough movie. Horikita's exceptional work was recognized by
Vogue Nippon which identified her as one of the eleven
Women of the Year in 2007. On October of the following year, she was once again seen on television opposite
Yuzu's lead vocalist Yujin Kitagawa, leading the cast of Fuji TV's golden time slot in the drama
Innocent Love. Towards the end of the year, she had been cast as Naomi, the female protagonist of
Dareka ga Watashi ni Kiss wo Shite or
DareKiss (based on
Gabrielle Zevin's popular novel,
Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac) a Hollywood-Japan collaboration film directed by internationally acclaimed director and self-confessed Japanese culture fanatic Hans Canosa. It was revealed that one-third of her lines in the movie were in English. As soon as the filming for
DareKiss ended, Horikita had gone on to appear in two television dramas:
Atashinchi no Danshi in 2009 as an adoptive mother of six young men (played by
Jun Kaname and Mukai Osamu among others) and
Tokujo Kabachi!! in 2010 as an administrative scrivener opposite
Arashi's
Sho Sakurai. In January 2011, Horikita starred in the movie adaptation of
Into the White Night, a widely read novel that was adapted into a television drama in 2006 starring
Haruka Ayase and
Takayuki Yamada. Produced by
Wowow Films, the movie was screened at the
Berlin Film Festival in the Panorama category. In 2012, Horikita was offered to lead the cast of an
NHK asadora named
Doctor Ume . The morning drama featured Horikita as Umeko Shimomura in her carefree teenage years until she blossomed into a dependable town doctor during the Showa era. For the first time in nine years,
NHK recorded an average audience rating past 20% for an
asadora time slot when
Doctor Ume garnered an average audience rating of 20.7%. At the end of 2012, Horikita made her stage debut in a performance of
Joan of Arc. Horikita had also ventured into
voice acting, debuting as an
anime voice actress for one of the characters in
Nobita and the Green Giant Legend 2008. Her highly featured project as a voice actress was for
Professor Layton in which she provided the voice of the main character Luke. In early 2009, she also dubbed a character from the Belgian 3D animated movie ''Nat's Space Adventure 3D/Fly Me to the Moon''. She dubbed the voice of the protagonist who is a young male fly who was determined to explore outer space. ==Personal life==