I have to humbly say people really like the bad guys.

That's the worst thing for an actor: when you say to someone, "Yeah, I was in that movie," and they say, "You were?"

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.

You can't just replace someone with a regular-looking guy who didn't say any of the lines.

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.

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

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.