There are a lot of wannabe men in Hollywood. But when you have that Hollywood mentality, there aren't a lot of real, grounded people.

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.

I was clear: "I don't want to play businessmen with bifocal glasses and cameras, so if you're going to give me an Asian bad guy to play, then I'm going to give you the baddest Asian bad guy you've ever seen, and you're not going to forget that I was in the film."

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

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.

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 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.