ACTOR

Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa

1950 - 2025

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Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (Japanese: 田川 洋行, romanized: Tagawa Hiroyuki; 27 September 1950 – 4 December 2025) was an actor and film producer who was best known for his role as the evil shapeshifter sorcerer Shang Tsung in various works of the Mortal Kombat franchise: he first played the character in the 1995 film adaptation, and reprised it in 2013 for the television series Mortal Kombat: Legacy and in 2019 for the video game Mortal Kombat 11. He appeared as Lt. A.J. Shimamura on 15 episodes of the American television series Nash Bridges. Often cast as villains, he became known for his film roles in: The Last Emperor (1987), the James Bond film Licence to Kill (1989), Showdown in Little Tokyo (1991), American Me (1992), Rising Sun (1993), Mortal Kombat (1995), The Phantom (1996), Snow Falling on Cedars (1999), Pearl Harbor (2001), Planet of the Apes (also 2001), Memoirs of a Geisha (2005), Tekken (2009), 47 Ronin (2013), Tekken 2: Kazuya's Revenge (2014), and Kubo and the Two Strings (2016). Read more on Wikipedia

His biography is available in 33 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 32 in 2024). Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa is the 1,069th most popular actor (up from 1,121st in 2024), the 445th most popular biography from Japan (down from 437th in 2019) and the 12th most popular Japanese Actor.

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Among ACTORS

Among actors, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa ranks 1,069 out of 13,578. Before him are Jonathan Hyde, Dirk Bogarde, Alain Cuny, Michel Bouquet, Carl Reiner, and Orlando Bloom. After him are Lou Ferrigno, Maud Adams, Katherine MacGregor, Max Wright, Matthew Broderick, and Lilli Palmer.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1950, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa ranks 88. Before him are Karen Carpenter, Paul Watson, David Graf, Assef Shawkat, Yumi Umeoka, and Kurt Koch. After him are Marcheline Bertrand, Steve McCurry, Hugh McDonald, Seiki Ichihara, Tsui Hark, and Mikhail Fradkov. Among people deceased in 2025, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa ranks 103. Before him are Friðrik Ólafsson, Hossein Salami, Zurab Tsereteli, Felix Baumgartner, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, and Nino Benvenuti. After him are Mohammad Bagheri, Souleymane Cissé, Vlastimil Hort, Ronald Venetiaan, Greg Bell, and Ornella Vanoni.

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In Japan

Among people born in Japan, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa ranks 445 out of 6,245. Before him are Ihara Saikaku (1642), Isao Iwabuchi (1933), Emperor Juntoku (1197), Kenji Doihara (1883), Jisaburō Ozawa (1886), and Kinjiro Shimizu (null). After him are Nobuyoshi Araki (1940), Tsuyoshi Kunieda (1944), Matsumura Sōkon (1809), Kenji Miyazawa (1896), Emperor Go-Kameyama (1347), and Kazumi Takada (1951).

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Among ACTORS In Japan

Among actors born in Japan, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa ranks 12. Before him are Ken Watanabe (1959), Hiroyuki Sanada (1960), Ken Takakura (1931), Takashi Shimura (1905), Victoria Principal (1950), and Setsuko Hara (1920). After him are Tatsuya Nakadai (1932), Sessue Hayakawa (1886), Masako Nozawa (1936), Machiko Kyō (1924), Momoko Kōchi (1932), and Hibari Misora (1937).

Japanese born Actors

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