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.

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.

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

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.

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

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!"

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."