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By Giulia Carbonaro
Senior Reporter
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Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, the Tokyo-born actor whose long career included roles in Mortal Kombat, Memoirs of a Geisha, and The Man in the High Castle series, has died at the age of 75.
According to his manager Margie Weiner, who confirmed his passing in an email shared by several outlets on Thursday, Tagawa died from complications due to a stroke he recently suffered.
"I had the privilege of representing Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa for many years as his longtime manager, but our relationship grew into something far deeper—he became like family," Weiner said in an email shared by Rolling Stone.
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"Cary was a rare soul: generous, thoughtful, and endlessly committed to his craft," she added. "His loss is immeasurable. My heart is with his family, friends, and all who loved him."
Tagawa died in Santa Barbara, California, surrounded by his family, according to his manager.
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Every year, more than 795,000 people in the U.S. suffer a stroke, according to data shared by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). A stroke occurs when the blood supply to part of the brain is blocked or reduced, in a way that prevents brain tissue from getting oxygen and nutrients.
In 2022, the latest year for which data is available, the CDC reports that 1 in 6 deaths in the U.S. were caused by cardiovascular disease due to stroke. While Weiner did not specify exactly which complications Tagawa suffered, common complications include swelling of the brain, seizures, infections, and cardiac complications.
Born in Japan’s capital by a Hawaii-born father and Japanese mother, a stage actor, Tagawa was named after legendary Hollywood actor Cary Grant, while his brother was named after Gregory Peck.
You might think that he was bound to have a career on the silver screen, and yet he only started acting at the age of 36 after having had many odd jobs—including celery farmer, limousine driver and photojournalist, as reported by CNN.
His first official credit comes from John Carpenter’s 1986 Big Trouble in Little China, where he had a relatively small role.
Tagawa was given his real breakthrough by Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci, who chose him for his Oscar-winning 1987 film The Last Emperor, a dramatization of the life of China’s final monarch of the Qing dynasty, Emperor Puyi.
The actor went on to have many more roles in his decades long career, but his most memorable one is possibly that of Shang Tsung in the 1995 film Mortal Kombat, which achieved cult status. He went on to play the same role in the TV series Mortal Kombat: Legacy and Mortal Kombat X: Generations.
Through his long career, the actor witnessed the expansion of roles for Asian men in Hollywood, which are now more diverse than they used to be even a decade ago, when it was unusual to see an Asian male actor cast in a lead romantic role.
It seems every day that the world of cinema is losing some of its greatest, brightest stars. Before Tagawa, this year marked the passing of visionary director David Lynch (January 16) and beloved actors Gene Hackman (February 26), Val Kilmer (April 1), Robert Redford (September 16), and Diane Keaton (October 11), among others.
In 2008, Tagawa pleaded guilty in a Honolulu court to a petty misdemeanor charge of harassing a girlfriend, who the police said had bruises on her legs at the time. He was fined $1,000 and placed under probation for a year after missing five court appearances.
His personal life was also marked by his conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy in 2015 and his acquisition of Russian citizenship a year later.
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