Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa Dead at 75: What We Know About The Last Emperor Star’s Cause of Death

Some people walk into a scene and you just know you’re watching the person you’ll remember. Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa was one of those faces and voices. He died Thursday in Santa Barbara at 75 from complications after a stroke, according to his rep. A sad ending for an actor who made being formidable look effortless.

The news, the legacy

Tagawa’s career is one of those winding, global stories that kept looping back to a few iconic touchstones. He first popped for a lot of us in 1987’s The Last Emperor as the icy Eunuch Chang, then went full menace as Kwang in Licence to Kill. By 1995, his turn as the soul-stealing sorcerer Shang Tsung in Mortal Kombat locked in a generational fanbase. He revisited that role repeatedly: on the web series Mortal Kombat: Legacy in 2013 and again with his voice in the game Mortal Kombat 11. Different mediums, same presence.

It’s easy to label him as the villain guy, because Hollywood did that a lot. But he also showed up in places that asked for more than just a scary stare: The Man in the High Castle, Revenge, Lost in Space, Snow Falling on Cedars, Pearl Harbor, Planet of the Apes, Memoirs of a Geisha. He made a swing through cult favorites and family fare too — American Me, The Phantom, Johnny Tsunami, Kubo and the Two Strings, Tekken, 47 Ronin — and he even produced (Duel of Legends) and took part in the documentary The Slanted Screen, which digs into how Asian American actors get boxed in.

How he thought about the bad-guy box

Tagawa was blunt about typecasting, and honestly, his take cut through a lot of hand-wringing. He told the Honolulu Advertiser that playing villains opened doors for him to play anything else later. And he didn’t shy away from owning it:

"Guaranteed, I wouldn’t have gotten to play good guys if I hadn’t played those bad guys... It’s something you take pride in, being not only the best Asian bad guy you can be, but the best of all bad guys."

That was his whole deal: take what the industry hands you, then do it at a level that makes them rethink what they handed you.

From Tokyo to SoCal to everywhere

Tagawa was born in Tokyo on September 27, 1950, to actress Mariko Hata and a Japanese American father who served in the U.S. military. His childhood hopscotched across American bases — think Fort Bragg to Fort Hood — before he settled in Southern California. Acting found him at Duarte High School, and he just kept going. He married Sally Phillips in 1984; they were together nearly 30 years and divorced in 2014. They had three children, and he’s also survived by two grandchildren.

If you’re curious about the money side, Celebrity Net Worth pegs him at $20 million, built across decades of acting, stunt work, martial arts teaching, and all the creative side gigs that tend to stack up when you never stop working.

The roles that stuck

Here’s a quick tour through the hits and deep cuts — film, TV, voice, and beyond — including the ones fans always bring up and the ones you might have forgotten:

• The Last Emperor (1987) as Eunuch Chang
• Licence to Kill (1989) as Kwang
• Showdown in Little Tokyo (1991) as Funekei Yoshida
• Rising Sun (1993) as Eddie Sakamura
• Mortal Kombat (1995) as Shang Tsung — then again in Mortal Kombat: Legacy (2013) and as the voice of Shang Tsung in Mortal Kombat 11
• American Me (1992)
• The Perfect Weapon (1991) as Kai
• The Phantom (1996)
• Snow Falling on Cedars (1999)
• Pearl Harbor (2001) as Cmdr. Minoru Genda
• Planet of the Apes (2001) as Krull
• Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) as The Baron
• Johnny Tsunami (1999)
• Tekken (2009) as Heihachi Mishima
• 47 Ronin (2013) as Tokugawa Tsunayoshi
• Kubo and the Two Strings (2016) as Hashi (voice)
• Looking in the Mirror (2019) as Henry
• Revenge (TV) as Satoshi Takeda
• The Man in the High Castle (TV) as Nobusuke Tagomi
• Lost in Space (TV) as Hiroki Watanabe
• Duel of Legends (producer) and The Slanted Screen (documentary contributor)

Why he lasted

Tagawa’s run after The Last Emperor looked like a master class in being unmistakable. He could snap a scene into focus with a line or a look, and when the 2010s rolled around, he leaned into TV in a way that surprised some people. His work as Satoshi Takeda on Revenge was sharp and sly; as Nobusuke Tagomi on The Man in the High Castle, he pulled off something trickier — quiet, layered, and haunted. That’s not an easy pivot when you’ve spent years being everyone’s go-to assassin, general, or crime boss.

If you want to revisit where it all clicked, The Last Emperor is streaming on Max and Prime Video. Start there, then chase it with Mortal Kombat for the full whiplash of his range.

One last thing

Tagawa’s fans span multiple generations for a reason. Whether you met him via a prestige drama or a button-mashing Saturday, you felt that same gravitational pull. Which performance is the one you always go back to? I have my answer, but I want to hear yours.