With the camera flashing away, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa calmly takes direction from the photographer. Watching him, it is apparent that Tagawa moves differently than other people. At first it appears the camera-flash is creating a strobe effect that is distorting the time-space relationship. But when the flash stops it's evident that Tagawa every fiber of his body relaxed glides into a stance in such a way that he seems to capture space and hold it. Thumbs held inward, Tagawa brings his hands up to his chest, his shoulders moving back almost imperceptibly and then dropping slightly as he crosses his arms and locks them into place.

All of this suggests a being borne of discipline and holds a key, a starting point to understanding the actor. Born in Tokyo , Tagawa's life reads like the basis for a novel. Raised on a series of Army posts in the Southern United States including Fort Bragg , N.C. , the largest military base in the world, Tagawa felt like a "stranger in a strange land." Little wonder. The cultural backdrop of the South can be an alienating environment for any outsider, especially a minority.

Tagawa's Hawaiian-born Japanese-American father served with a counter intelligence unit as part of the U.S. military forces occupying post World War II Japan . While there he met Tagawa's mother, a rebellious young woman who in many ways was his opposite. She ran away from her aristocratic background to become a stage actress known as Hata Mari (a name derived from inverting the first initials of WWI German spy Mata Hari).

From there it would be easy to assume Tagawa came to acting naturally. He did not. Although he says he "understood what acting was about at an early age" and was cast in high school plays, his mother dissuaded him from theatrical pursuits because in her opinion the characters offered to Asian actors in American films lacked depth.

As it turned out, it mattered little anyway at that stage of his life. Acting, as a career, wasn't at the forefront on his goal horizon during his teen years. Tagawa, who says he always feels "the warrior element of his being" within his psyche, aimed for a West Point appointment. Yet when he broached the subject to his stern father for approval the idea was vehemently opposed.

It was later, while attending USC, that the My Lai massacre a turning point for many Americans opposed to involvement in the Vietnam War had a profound effect upon Tagawa. Socially aware, the young college student felt that the atrocity in which more than three hundred Vietnamese civilians, including women and children, were murdered by U.S. Army Infantry personnel resulted from racism and cultural bias. Thus began his own rebellious stage, marked by anger and resentment toward an America he felt was turning its back on the fundamental ideals of the founders.

Struggling with the personal conflict resulting from his awareness of the larger world, martial arts provided Tagawa with a way to channel his anger and calm the emotional element of his character. He began studying karate in his teens and later simultaneously incorporated the fighting techniques with an exploration of his Japanese cultural heritage. The intertwined studies led him to trail-blaze his own style of martial arts. Calling it Chuu-Shin, it defines a process of centering inside the heart and mind, and provides the seeker with the structure to unite the physical and spiritual aspects of being.

In many ways, Tagawa's acting career has brought him full circle and stands as a reflection of his life of exploration. After landing his first role as an extra in Big Trouble in Little China (1986), he sought to avoid quotidian roles and within a short time was cast in Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor (1987). Dozens of parts came his way in the following years highlighted by his roles in Rising Sun (1993, directed by Philip Kaufman), Mortal Kombat (1995, directed by Paul Anderson), Vampires (1998, directed by John Carpenter), and Snow Falling on Cedars (1999, directed by Scott Hicks). Tagawa is currently in the enviable position of having featured roles in two of this summer’s biggest films: He plays Commander Genda Minoru in the historical saga Pearl Harbor , and Krull in Tim Burton’s epic sci-fi event film, Planet of the Apes.