If you grew up in the ‘90s and ever yelled “Your soul is mine!” at the TV screen while playing Mortal Kombat, you owe a lot of that chill to Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa. The man who brought Shang Tsung to life—with that perfect mix of menace, elegance, and pure evil—died early Thursday morning in Santa Barbara. He was 75.
It’s strange to think he’s gone. On screen, he always looked like he could stare straight through you and steal something you didn’t even know you had. Off screen, everyone who met him said the exact opposite: warm, humble, funny, the kind of guy who’d remember your name and ask about your family years later.
He had one of those faces Hollywood loved to cast as the villain, and he leaned into it beautifully—whether he was tormenting James Bond in Licence to Kill, facing off against Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes, or quietly stealing scenes in Memoirs of a Geisha and Pearl Harbor. But for a whole generation, he’ll always be the sorcerer in the long black robe who made finishing a Mortal Kombat match feel like surviving a horror movie.
He came back to the role again and again—Annihilation in ‘97, the web series Legacy in 2013, and even lent his voice and likeness to Mortal Kombat 11 and Onslaught. Every time, it felt like he never really left.
Before all of that, he had a small but unforgettable part in Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor—the kind of quiet performance that opens doors. From there the credits just kept piling up: Big Trouble in Little China, Rising Sun, Miami Vice, MacGyver, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Hawaii Five-0, Revenge, The Man in the High Castle… more than 150 roles across five decades.
What a lot of people never knew is how serious he was about martial arts. He started kendo as a kid, picked up karate at USC, then went to Japan to train under the legendary Masatoshi Nakayama. Eventually he created his own system and called it Chun-Shin. That discipline showed every time he moved on screen.
His family says he passed peacefully, surrounded by his three children—Calen, Brynne, and Cana—after complications from a stroke. He also leaves behind two grandchildren, River and Thea Clayton.
Years ago, when a young actor asked him for advice, he gave two rules that feel even heavier today:
“First, the worst thing you can do is start believing the Hollywood hype. Second, focus on the craft and forget everything else.”
Rest easy, sir. You scared the hell out of us, then somehow made us love you for it.