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.

The power and depth of Japanese acting certainly inspired me, so I was determined that Hollywood was going to get a taste of that, that Americans were going to get a taste of Japanese action.

To suddenly be working with one of the top-10 directors in the world, plus the film was in China, I almost blurted out, "How much do I have to pay?" It was just like a dream come true. That was an amazing experience.

In fact, I think new media is going to make a big difference with injecting more people of color into Hollywood and non-Hollywood.

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

The power of Hollywood, as we know, is that it can create these images in people's minds, and they live with those images for their whole life.

Native Americans say, "It's a good day to die," and samurai live their life to die honorably, so that kind of energy creates a certain mindset of reactiveness with control to a point. And after that, it's gone.