Mako was an Academy and Tony award-nominated actor, famous for his gravelly voice. Born in Japan, he moved to New York with his parents in the 1940’s and joined the military in the early 1950’s. It was during this time that he began acting in military theatrical productions and discovered his love for the craft. Mako’s first film role was in the 1959 movie Never So Few, and nearly a decade later he was nominated for an Oscar for his performance in The Sand Pebbles. As his career continued, Mako (almost all of his credits omit his last name: Iwamatsu) began to earn a reputation as a character actor, and delivered memorable performances in films such as Highlander III: The Final Dimension, Conan the Barbarian, Conan the Destroyer, Sidekicks, RoboCop 3, Seven Years in Tibet, Pearl Harbor, Memoirs of a Geisha and Takashi Miike’s The Bird People of China. Mako also racked up an impressive number of television credits, appearing in many popular TV series including M*A*S*H, The Incredible Hulk, Magnum P.I., The A-Team, The Green Hornet, and Frasier. And remember that gravelly voice I mentioned? Mako did a lot of voice work, and provided his memorable voice to TV series Avatar: The Last Airbender, Duck Dodgers, Rugrats in Paris: The Movie, and TMNT. But there is no cooler Mako role than as Aku, the embodiment of all evil, in the kickass Genndy Tartakovsky cartoon series Samurai Jack. Mako died in 2006 at the age of 72.