Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, The Last Emperor and Mortal Kombat actor, dies at 75
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Actor Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa at the premiere of The Man In The High Castle 2 in California in 2016.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Qasim Nauman
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NEW YORK – Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, the Japan-born American actor known for his roles in The Last Emperor (1987), The Man In The High Castle (2015 to 2019) and the Mortal Kombat media franchise (1992 to present), died in Santa Barbara, California, on Dec 4. He was 75.
His publicist Penny Vizcarra and manager Margie Weiner confirmed his death and said the cause was complications from a stroke. Tagawa was with his family when he died, Ms Vizcarra added.
Over a career that spanned more than three decades, Tagawa notched dozens of film and television credits. He got a break early in his career when he was cast as the eunuch Chang in The Last Emperor, Bernardo Bertolucci’s Oscar-winning film.
Roles in a number of high-profile projects followed, including the 1989 James Bond film Licence To Kill. Tagawa also played the hotheaded Eddie Sakamura in Rising Sun, the 1993 film adaptation of the Michael Crichton novel with a cast that included Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes.
Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (left) and Sean Connery in Rising Sun.
PHOTO: 20TH CENTURY FOX
Later in the 1990s came what Tagawa described as a game-changer for his career: the role of the soul-stealing sorcerer Shang Tsung in the 1995 film adaptation of Mortal Kombat, the hit fighting video game. He reprised the role in subsequent Mortal Kombat films and television shows and also lent his voice to video games in the series.
Tagawa also appeared in Pearl Harbor (2001) and Memoirs Of A Geisha (2005).
Later in his career, he was cast in a major role in Amazon’s critically acclaimed The Man In The High Castle. He played Nobusuke Tagomi, a soft-spoken Japanese trade minister who is trying to prevent another war, in the adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s novel of the same name, which imagines a world in which the Axis powers emerged victorious after World War II.
Tagawa said the character had parallels to his own experience as an Asian American growing up in the United States after the war.
Tagawa was born Sept 27, 1950, in Tokyo. He moved to the US when he was five, and was raised in the south by a military family. He later moved to Los Angeles, where he taught martial arts, according to a statement from his family.
Tagawa is survived by his wife Sally Phillips; his children Calen, Byrnne and Cana; and two grandchildren, River and Thea Clayton. NYTIMES
