Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, the actor who starred in the Mortal Kombat franchise and Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle television series, has died. He was 75.
Tagawa died on Thursday in Santa Barbara due to complications from a stroke, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.
He starred in various Mortal Kombat projects, beginning with Paul W.S. Anderson’s original 1995 film. Tagawa portrayed Shang Tsung, a villain from the franchise, across Mortal Kombat‘s film, television and video game slate.
Tagawa was born in Tokyo, Japan, and moved around the United States during his adolescence hailing from a military family. He later moved to Los Angeles where he began acting and taught his own style of martial arts, Chu Shin.
He landed his first film role in Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor. The 1987 drama won nine Academy Awards, including the coveted best picture category and best director for Bertolucci, among others.
Tagawa reflected on the “amazing experience” of working with Bertolucci so early into his career in a 2015 interview with AV Club. “It was mind boggling. You know, to suddenly be working with one of the top-10 directors in the world, plus the film was in China, I almost blurted out, ‘How much do I have to pay?’ It was just like a dream come true,” he recalled.
The Japanese-American actor went on to star in a slew of notable films, including License to Kill (1989); Planet of the Apes (2001); Memoirs of a Geisha (2005); and Tekken (2010). He also let his talents to the small screen in Nash Bridges (1996); Hawaii (2004); Revenge (2012-2013); one 2014 episode of Teen Wolf; Star Wars: Rebels (2017); two 2017 episodes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; the Emmy Award-winning Man in the High Castle; and Netflix’s Blue Eye Samurai (2023).
Following Tagawa’s appearance in the first 1995 Mortal Kombat movie, he appeared in the 1997 sequel Annihilation via archival footage. He would additionally later portray the character of Shang Tsung in the 2013 series Mortal Kombat: Legacy; one 2015 episode of Mortal Kombat X: Generations; and the video game Mortal Kombat 11, including its followups Aftermath (2020) and Ultimate (2020).
The actor told AV Club in 2015 that Mortal Kombat “was a game-changer” for his career, while reflecting on returning for the Legacy video game.
“Oh, it was a pleasure,” he said of reprising the role of Shang Tsung. “I think it just gives me an opportunity to refresh it for this new generation. And the game keeps getting bigger, so I think it’ll go on. It’s definitely a huge part of my career. But so are so many of these films I’ve been in. I’ve been in a lot of cult movies, but I’ve been very fortunate to have been involved in projects that people remember.”
Tagawa and his wife, Sally, lived together on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, where they raised their two children.
Tagawa is survived by his wife, Sally; his three children, Calen, Byrnne and Cana; and two grandchildren, River and Thea Clayton.
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