Hiroyuki Sanada Quotes

I always loved samurai movies, and I wanted to incorporate that whole level of elegance and just the code of the samurai to 'Conan.'

I've always been really interested in the age of the samurai in Japan.

I've always wanted to play a samurai warrior.

The sword was a very elegant weapon in the days of the samurai. You had honor and chivalry much like the knights, and yet it was a gruesome and horrific weapon.

I look at the Samurai because they were the artists of their time. What I think struck me when I read Bushido is compassion. 'If there's no one there to help, go out and find someone to help.' That hit me, because I try to lead my life like that.

I am inspired by both Japanese Samurai films, in particular the films of Kurosawa, and how they share the spirit of American Westerns, with the influences running in both directions, and including the 'Spaghetti Westerns' and films of Sam Peckinpah.

The Japanese had a very strong belief in Bushido, death before dishonour. They were fighting for their country; they were the aggressors in World War II.

For a Samurai to be brave, he must have a bit of black blood.

I watched the 'Seven Samurai' a lot because I loved it growing up. I can't describe to you how powerful that was. When you're a kid, you can't watch an almost-three-hour movie, but this was a war I just never saw before, with these samurai. I could relate to it, just being poor.

I've always wanted to see what it would be like to live in feudal Japan; I think that would be interesting.

'Samurai' is not an animated show like you would normally watch on TV. We tell the stories from a different perspective - backward, very nonlinear. It treats it more seriously as an art form.

I've always been in love with samurais, that kind of classic idea about a hero who has a sword with an intense skill and is very stoic and doesn't talk much.

I am actually a 'Seven Samurai' fan.

Playing Japanese characters and being in environments that are Japanese, like a character's apartment or whatever, if you have directors or art directors who just don't know what' s what with Japanese culture, then pretty soon something's just passed through. I've been through many times where I've pointed out the incorrectness of so much of what's been done to a set.

This is almost the most famous story The last samurai - Samurai story - in Japan.

But the biggest challenge overall was narrowing down the complex narrative elements into a clean and straightforward story while maintaining a sense of the cultural context that makes the film special.

My mentality is that of a samurai. I would rather commit seppuku than fail.

I have always had this very strong, call it a feeling, call it a prejudice, call it a conviction ... that the mysteries are not easily available. You have to earn entrance into them. You didn't learn things for too little. You had to pay a price. And I felt that LSD was just blasting superhighways into the mysteries. And what I really didn't like about LSD is that people who were taking it were seeming to become less and less as they took it. They got emptier and more vapid.

The Way of a Warrior is to establish harmony.

Great stories don't often make great movies. Its' a crafted art form.

"Based on a true story" is a come-on, the aesthetic equivalent of "no loan request refused." For, at best, the creator has fashioned a film based on his understanding of, interpretation of, and reduction of the report of an actual occurrence.

I honestly consider that the greatest gift to me, is the reaction that I get from my work. That is a given which I never, ever take for granted. But to be given that by audiences, individuals, on the street, in the theater, is an extraordinary feeling.

I think that any story that intends on being culturally authentic and true to life experiences will be a great story. Even if that culture isn't a hip-hop-centric one.

I do not bring any professional knowledge of the issue to bear, but what I do bring to my consideration of immigration is a deepened and highly sensitized feeling with those persons who feel alien in our country. I can feel the strangeness they feel because it is something I have experienced in a different area.

I read that Hollywood wanted to film Fences years ago with a white director, but [August] Wilson refused. He thought that the director needed to have lived the culture of black Americans.