Chinen was born the son of Takashi Chinen, a former Japanese gymnast who won a bronze medal in the 1992 Summer Olympics. 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 and the ri is taken from Li, a surname his mother thought common among Chinese gold medalist gymnasts.
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. On September 21, 2007, he made his debut as a member of Hey! Say! JUMP. He was in a 2008 drama, One-Pound Gospel, as "Yoshihiko" in Episode 3, with Hey! Say! JUMP member Ryosuke Yamada and their senpai, Kazuya Kamenashi. In the same year, he played in the drama Sensei wa erai! as Umeno Wataru, along with other Hey! Say! JUMP members: Daiki Arioka, Ryosuke Yamada and Yuto Nakajima. In October 2008, he was in the drama called Scrap Teacher: Kyoshi Saisei as Yoshida Eitaro, along with the same Hey! Say! JUMP members that played with him in Sensei wa erai!. As a supporter of the Japanese volleyball team for the FIVB World Grand Prix 2009, he performed in June 2009 with Ryosuke Yamada and Nakayama Yuma w/ B.I.Shadow, which is composed ofKento Nakajima, Kikuchi Fuma, Hokuto Matsumura and Yugo Kochi as members of the temporary group NYC Boys. The "C" of NYC boys comes from the initials of his family name "Chinen". 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 is the only such case of a Johnny's talent officially debuting in two groups, 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. 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 senpai Tomohisa 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.
