Professor Toru Tanaka

Professor Toru Tanaka was born on Jan 06, 1930 in USA. Professor Toru Tanaka's big-screen debut came with An Eye for an Eye directed by Steve Carver in 1981, strarring The Professor. Professor Toru Tanaka is known for Tales of the Gold Monkey directed by Virgil W. Vogel, Stephen Collins stars as Jake Cutter and Jeff MacKay as Corky. The upcoming new movie Professor Toru Tanaka plays is Hard Justice which will be released on Oct 01, 1996.

Built like the proverbial Patton tank, Professor Toru Tanaka was arguably the successor to Harold Sakata as the archetypal Asian henchman who possessed incredible strength, and clobbered those foolish enough to tangle with him. Born Charles Kalani, he was a successful wrestler and served for over ten years in the US Armed Forces attaining the rank of sergeant. Tanaka first appeared playing a Japanese sumo wrestler on the TV series Little House on the Prairie, however his first film role pitched him as an insidious villain in the chop socky Dent pour dent (1981) in which he faces down Chuck Norris before being kicked through a large table. In total, Tanaka appeared in only 23 films including appearing alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger twice in Running Man (1987) and Last Action Hero (1993).Appearing in L'arme parfaite (1991) with 6th degree Kempo black belt, Jeff Speakman, Tanaka comes to a fiery end courtesy of an LPG tank!! In reality, Tanaka was far removed from his own screen persona, and was known to be a kind & generous man to all who knew him. He passed away in August, 2000 from heart failure.