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.

People say, "How come you play bad guys so much?" And I say, "Well, have you seen many Asian good-guy roles?"

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!

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.

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.

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.

Americans really don't understand the Japanese nature, but it's not an easy thing to understand.