Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa Quotes
-
My major intention for coming to Hollywood - besides the fact that I was just enamored with acting from a very young age - was that I was tired of seeing wimpy Asian actors.
→ -
In fact, I think new media is going to make a big difference with injecting more people of color into Hollywood and non-Hollywood.
→ -
You can't just replace someone with a regular-looking guy who didn't say any of the lines.
→ -
Native Americans say, "It's a good day to die," and samurai live their life to die honorably, so that kind of energy creates a certain mindset of reactiveness with control to a point. And after that, it's gone.
→ -
I was excited about working with Richard Gere. Oh, and Joan Allen! Oh, my God, she is such a force of nature, it's mind boggling.
→ -
The power and depth of Japanese acting certainly inspired me, so I was determined that Hollywood was going to get a taste of that, that Americans were going to get a taste of Japanese action.
→ -
I was clear: "I don't want to play businessmen with bifocal glasses and cameras, so if you're going to give me an Asian bad guy to play, then I'm going to give you the baddest Asian bad guy you've ever seen, and you're not going to forget that I was in the film."
→ -
People say, "How come you play bad guys so much?" And I say, "Well, have you seen many Asian good-guy roles?"
→ -
I'm not a method actor, I don't write my character's history or all those kinds of things. I'm more about the 90 percent of the brain that is subconscious. I like to just pick certain pieces, let it soak in, and then let it kind of emerge out.
→ -
Bruce Lee was the first guy to bring film recognition of Asian men not being wimps, so it made me want to be as powerful as he was.
→ -
Looking back at my career, if there's one word that most people use to describe me, it's intense.
→ -
There are a lot of wannabe men in Hollywood. But when you have that Hollywood mentality, there aren't a lot of real, grounded people.
→ -
Americans really don't understand the Japanese nature, but it's not an easy thing to understand.
→ -
Before I started studying martial arts, I had temper problems. I could definitely fly off the handle. Being raised in the south in 1956 definitely gave me some memories to latch onto for negative emotions.
→ -
That's the worst thing for an actor: when you say to someone, "Yeah, I was in that movie," and they say, "You were?"
→ -
I have to humbly say people really like the bad guys.
→ -
The power of Hollywood, as we know, is that it can create these images in people's minds, and they live with those images for their whole life.
→ -
I really believe that breath, in and of itself can become the ultimate self-healing tool.
→ -
In Hawaii, there are 50-year-old grandfathers, because they got married so early.
→ -
I've been in a lot of cult movies, but I've been very fortunate to have been involved in projects that people remember.
→ -
Kids keep getting wiser younger, which is dangerous, and adults need to stop taking themselves too seriously.
→ -
Nature is a big part of my weekend. Whenever possible, I take Friday and Monday off and spend four days outdoors. We should remind ourselves that there was something here before us, a force more powerful than us.
→ -
I used to be a street performer, and performances on Venice Beach, it's like playing the Apollo: They let you know if they don't like you!
→ -
Actors are always looking for ways to build a character.
→ -
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. That was an amazing experience.
→ -
There's one thing about weights with action movies: Once your muscles get that tight, it's sometimes hard to stop your movement, especially if you're trying to move with some strength, and with the swords in the film.
→ -
I don't know if many people realize that Dolph Lundgren is a chemical engineer. He's not a dumb blond guy. This guy is smart and he's a martial artist.
→ -
Half my family was from the Imperial Japanese Navy, and the other half was U.S. Army, and I was raised on Army posts during my childhood, so I pretty much began my life with a split-brain sort of thing.
→ -
It's not whether you fall or make a mistake, it's what you do when you fall. And I say you stand up. You keep standing up. It's not how many times you fall, it's how many times you stand up.
→ -
Playing Japanese characters and being in environments that are Japanese, like a character's apartment or whatever, if you have directors or art directors who just don't know what' s what with Japanese culture, then pretty soon something's just passed through. I've been through many times where I've pointed out the incorrectness of so much of what's been done to a set.
→
Related Authors
-
Tia Carrere Actress -
Hiroyuki Sanada Actor -
Mark Dacascos Actor -
Tadanobu Asano Actor -
Jason Alexander Actor -
Kelly Overton Actress -
Linden Ashby Actor -
Christopher Lambert Actor -
Lasse Hallstrom Film director -
Talisa Soto Actress -
Rupert Evans Actor -
Dolph Lundgren Actor -
Rufus Sewell Actor -
Bridgette Wilson Actress -
Ian Anthony Dale Actor