PETALING JAYA, Dec 5 — Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, the Japanese-American actor most widely recognised for portraying Shang Tsung in the Mortal Kombat franchise, has died in Santa Barbara aged 75.
His family told Deadline that he died early Thursday morning from complications of a stroke.
Tagawa first embodied the villainous sorcerer in New Line Cinema’s 1995 Mortal Kombat adaptation before returning for 1997’s Mortal Kombat Annihilation.
According to Deadline, his breakthrough came earlier in 1987 with Bernardo Bertolucci’s Oscar-winning The Last Emperor, in which he played Chang, the emperor’s driver.
This led to a succession of roles in major studio productions such as Licence to Kill, Pearl Harbor, Planet of the Apes, Elektra, Memoirs of a Geisha and 47 Ronin, many of which drew upon his martial arts background.
In 2015, he secured one of his final prominent screen roles in Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle.
