Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa played evil sorcerer Shang Tsung in the Mortal Kombat films, TV shows and video games, and also appeared in Licence to Kill, The Last Emperor and The Man in the High Castle
Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, best known for his roles in the Mortal Kombat films, TV shows and video games, has reportedly died aged 75. Actor and martial arts expert Tagawa died surrounded by his children following a stroke on Thursday in Santa Barbara, California, his family told Deadline.
Tagawa also appeared in The Last Emperor , Memoirs of a Geisha and The Man in the High Castle, and lent his voice to video games such as Soldier Boyz , Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu and World of Warcraft: Legion .
He will be most widely remembered for his role as evil sorcerer Shang Tsung in the Mortal Kombat franchise.
He first played Shang Tsung in New Line’s 1995 film adaptation and also featured in the 1997 follow-up Mortal Kombat Annihilation . Tagawa reprised the role with guest appearances in the 2013 TV series Mortal Kombat: Legacy and one episode of Mortal Kombat X: Generations in 2015.
In 2019, he provided Shang Tsung’s voice in the video game Mortal Kombat 11, and lent his physical likeness to the 2023 role-playing video game Mortal Kombat: Onslaught .
Tagawa said of the first Mortal Kombat film, which grossed more than $100 million: “It was the perfect timing in that Mortal Kombat as a video game, at the time we did the film, was on number four or five and that the impact of the film certainly had to do with the build of the video games.”
Tagawa also played evil corporate titan Heihachi Mishima in a film adaptation of another combat game, Tekken.
Tagawa’s breakout film was Bernardo Bertolucci’s Oscar Best Picture-winning The Last Emperor in 1987. He was cast as Chang, the emperor’s driver, who plays a small but pivotal part in the story.
He also appeared in License to Kill, Rising Sun, Snow Falling on Cedars, Pearl Harbor, Planet of the Apes, Elektra, Memoirs of a Geisha and 47 Ronin, with many of these roles utilising his martial arts skills.
Tagawa said in a 2010 interview: “I was born in Tokyo and began training in Kendo when I was in junior high school. Then when I was five we moved to Fort Bragg, North Carolina; and that’s when I got my first real lesson in how to use the martial arts. Being Japanese and living in the south during the ’50s was pretty tough.”
Tagawa focused on traditional Japanese karate at the University of Southern California. He later moved back to Japan to study karate under Master Nakayama, before creating and teaching his own system of Chun-Shin, which he called “a study of energy … completely without a physical fighting concept.”
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