Sessue Hayakawa Quotes

Sessue Hayakawa — Japanese Actor born on June 10, 1889, died on November 23, 1973

Sessue Hayakawa was a Japanese Issei actor who starred in American, Japanese, French, German, and British films. Hayakawa was active at the outset of the American film industry. He was the first Asian actor to find stardom in the United States and Europe. He is the first Asian American as well as the first Japanese American movie star and the first Asian American leading man. His "broodingly handsome" good looks and typecasting as a sinister villain with sexual dominance made him a heartthrob among American women, and the first male sex symbol of Hollywood, several years in advance of Rudolph Valentino... (wikipedia)

That is one reason so many of the Japanese pictures are not good, they cannot spare all the footage necessary for that bow, which is repeated over and over again.

I have come East to find what the public likes.

I like America anyway. In Japan we are much more formal. If two friends are separated for a long time and they meet they bow and bow and bow. They keep bowing without exchanging a word. Here they slap each other on the back and say: Hello, old man, how goes everything.

I shall ask to see whether they want me in dress clothes or in Japanese.

My one ambition is to play a hero.

Sessue Hayakawa Quotes

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