When you start working on a series, it's almost too much work. It's like a movie a week.

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!

There were times when I purposely didn't go to school because of Pearl Harbor Day, because certainly there was enough media about it every year to remind everybody. So when I heard they were going to make the movie, I thought, "Oh, no, please not another Pearl Harbor mention!"

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

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

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.

Before I started studying martial arts, I had temper problems. I could definitely fly off the handle. Being raised in the south in 1956 definitely gave me some memories to latch onto for negative emotions.