CARY HIROYUKI TAGAWA
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CARY HIROYUKI TAGAWA
Actor Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa is a pretty busy guy. As he puts it, “It’s one of those moments when it rains, it pours. I’m in the middle of a tropical storm right now. This one’s been building for a while.” Tagawa is referring to his current promotional tour for his new movie Balls of Fury, as well as recent shooting he’s done for a television role and a future media endeavor into which he’s dipping his toes.
The former MidWeek cover subject from December 1998 and December 2005, says he’s not much into comedy, but took the role of bad guy “Mysterious Asian Man” (pictured above) in Balls of Fury mostly because fellow actor Christopher Walken was also in the movie.
“It was a little nerve-rackingly nervous, my first comedy. I just saw it last night,” Tagawa says. “In general, it’s always hard for an actor to watch for the first time (their work on screen). Judging from the audience, they liked it. It got great audience response.”
Balls of Fury opens in theaters Aug. 29 and also stars George Lopez and Maggie Q of Mililani. The story follows a down-and-out ping-pong champion who is recruited by the FBI for a secret mission, during which he works to avenge his father’s death and rise to the top of the ping-pong world once again. Tagawa has a feeling this will be either the only comedy of his career, or one of few others.
“I’m not holding my breath; (there are) so many other drama and action things that are waiting,” he says.
On the television scene, Tagawa just finished filming an episode of NBC’s Heroes and is going back next month to shoot another.
“I’m doing two episodes of Heroes as a sword maker. It was very enjoyable. It’s interesting to play the peaceful part of someone who works with the sword,” he says.
Locally, Tagawa will be working with local filmmaker Edgy Lee on her latest project, Pacific Network Television, associated with Time Warner Telecom. Pacific Network will be a nine-channel, native Hawaiian-themed Internet-TV portal.
The 56-year-old (he turns 57 in September) Tagawa says he “started late” with having children. Tagawa’s 19-year-old son is attending college in Santa Barbara, Calif.; his daughter, 16, attends high school and his youngest is 7.
Tagawa, a former Kauai resident, currently calls Diamond Head home, but has been “traveling so much in the last two years - I’ve been to Kazakhstan, the Himalayas, India - that I haven’t been there (home) for anything more than four weeks.”
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