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.

Actors are always looking for ways to build a character.

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!"

In Hawaii, there are 50-year-old grandfathers, because they got married so early.

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.

American comedies about Asians have never been funny to me. That always kind of pissed me off.

Looking back at my career, if there's one word that most people use to describe me, it's intense.