Sessue Hayakawa
Actor

Sessue Hayakawa Net Worth

Sessue Hayakawa was born in Chiba, Japan in 1889 to a provincial governor and an aristocratic family of the "samurai" class. After being rejected from the Japanese navy due to hearing problems, he decided to pursue a career in the theatre and eventually toured the United States in 1913. Thomas H. Ince spotted him and offered him a movie contract, and Hayakawa became an overnight success. He was the first Asian-American star of the American screen, and his appearance in Cecil B. DeMille's The Cheat (1915) made him a silent-screen superstar. His popularity rivaled that of Caucasian male movie stars in the 1910s, and he became one of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood. However, his career ended in 1922 due to a rise in anti-Asian sentiment. He returned to Hollywood in 1931 and made his talking-picture debut in Daughter of the Dragon (1931). He returned to Japan and France, where he starred in La bataille (1923) and Yoshiwara (1937). He returned to Hollywood for a third time in 1949 and reached the apex of his career with his role as the martinet POW camp commandant in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957). He retired in 1966 and returned to Japan, becoming a Zen Buddhist priest while remaining involved in his craft by giving private acting lessons. Ninety years after achieving stardom, he remains one of the few Asians to assume superstar status in American motion pictures.
Sessue Hayakawa is a member of Actor

Age, Biography and Wiki

Who is it? Actor, Producer, Director
Birth Day June 10, 1889
Birth Place  Nanaura, Chiba, Japan, Japan
Age 130 YEARS OLD
Died On November 23, 1973(1973-11-23) (aged 84)\nTokyo, Japan
Birth Sign Cancer
Native name 早川 金太郎
Occupation Actor
Years active 1914–1966
Spouse(s) Tsuru Aoki (m. 1914–1961; her death)

💰 Net worth

Sessue Hayakawa, a renowned figure in the entertainment industry, is estimated to have a net worth ranging from $100,000 to $1 million in 2024. Hailing from Japan, Hayakawa has made a significant impact as an actor, producer, and director. With an illustrious career spanning several decades, he has garnered immense fame and recognition worldwide. From his early days in silent films to his later successes in both the Japanese and American film industries, Hayakawa's talent and dedication have propelled him to incredible heights. As an influential figure, his net worth undoubtedly reflects his accomplishments and enduring legacy in the world of cinema.

Famous Quotes:

Miscegenation, or the mixing of the races, with its horror of potential sexual relations between "yellow" Asian men and "white" European American women, threatened the masculinity of European American men so much so that the basis of Chinese–European American conflict became a contest of securing scarce resources, which in this specific case were European American women. The threat of the "Yellow Peril" in the eyes of European American men perpetuated the status of European American women as chattel, as product.

Biography/Timeline

1645

Many of Hayakawa's films are lost. However, most of his later works, including The Bridge on the River Kwai, the Jerry Lewis comedy The Geisha Boy in which Hayakawa lampoons his role in The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Swiss Family Robinson, Tokyo Joe, and Three Came Home are available on DVD. For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Hayakawa was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1645 Vine Street, in Hollywood, California.

1889

Hayakawa was born Kintaro Hayakawa (早川 金太郎, Hayakawa Kintarō) in the village of Nanaura, now part of a town called Chikura, in the city of Minamibōsō in Chiba Prefecture, Japan, on June 10, 1889.

1910

Following The Cheat, Hayakawa became a top leading man for romantic dramas in the 1910s and early 1920s. He also Diversified his body of work with Westerns and action films. Sought after for roles, but dissatisfied with being constantly typecast, Hayakawa decided to form his own production company. He borrowed $1 million from william Joseph Connery—a former classmate at the University of Chicago and son of James Patrick Connery, who in turn was a former Business partner of Will H. Hays of the Teapot Dome Scandal—and formed Haworth Pictures Corporation in 1918. Over the next three years, Hayakawa produced 23 films and earned $2 million a year. Hayakawa had total control over his material; he produced, starred in, and contributed to the design, writing, editing, and directing of the films, which were highly influential in the American public's perception of Asians. Critics hailed Hayakawa's understated, Zen-influenced acting style. Hayakawa sought to bring muga, or the "absence of doing", to his performances, in direct contrast to the then-popular studied poses and broad gestures. He was one of the first stars to do so.

1912

Hayakawa graduated from the University of Chicago in 1912, and subsequently made plans to return to Japan. He traveled to Los Angeles and awaited a transpacific steamship. During his stay, he discovered the Japanese Theatre in Little Tokyo and became fascinated with acting and performing plays. It was around this time that Hayakawa first assumed the stage name Sessue (雪洲, Sesshū), meaning "snowy field" (雪 means "snow" and 洲 means "north field"). One of the productions in which Hayakawa performed was called The Typhoon. Tsuru Aoki, a member of the acting troupe, was so impressed with Hayakawa's abilities and enthusiasm that she enticed film Producer Thomas H. Ince to see the play. Ince saw the production and offered to turn it into a silent film with the original cast. Anxious to return to Japan, Hayakawa tried to dissuade Ince by requesting the then-astronomic fee of $500 a week, but Ince agreed to his request.

1914

On May 1, 1914, Hayakawa married fellow Issei and performer Tsuru Aoki, who co-starred in several of his films. Hayakawa's first child, a son, was born in New York in 1929, to a white Actress named Ruth Noble. The boy was known as Alexander Hayes, but the name was changed to Yukio after Sessue and Aoki adopted the child and took him to be raised and educated in Japan. Later, Hayakawa had two daughters with Aoki: Yoshiko, an Actress, and Fujiko, a Dancer. Aoki died in 1961. Hayakawa later relocated back to Japan and dedicated himself to Zen Buddhism, becoming an ordained priest.

1915

Hayakawa's second film for Famous Players-Lasky was The Cheat (1915), directed by Cecil B. DeMille. The Cheat co-starred Fannie Ward as Hayakawa's love interest and was a huge success, making Hayakawa a romantic idol and sex symbol to the female movie-going public. With his popularity and "broodingly handsome" good looks, Hayakawa commanded a salary that reached over $5,000 a week in 1915. In 1917, he built his residence, a castle-styled mansion, at the corner of Franklin Avenue and Argyle Street in Hollywood, which was a local landmark until it was demolished in 1956.

1917

Physically, Hayakawa possessed "an athlete's physique and agility". A 1917 profile on Hayakawa stated that he "is proficient in jiu-jitsu, an expert Fencer, and can swim like a fish. He is a good horseman and plays a fast tennis racket. He is tall for a Japanese, being five feet seven and a half inches in height, and weighs 157 pounds."

1918

In more than 20 films for Famous Players, Hayakawa was typecast as either the dangerous villain or the exotic lover who in the end would turn his female love interest over to the "proper" man of her own race. This typecasting was the reason Hayakawa established his own production company in 1918, near the height of his American fame. At the time, he stated he wanted to be shown "as he really is and not as fiction paints him." As for his prior roles, he said, "They are false and give people a wrong idea of us [Asians]." Hayakawa desperately sought to show a more balanced and fair portrait of Asians. In 1949, he lamented, "My one ambition is to play a hero." In his autobiography he observed, "All my life has been a journey. But my journey differs from the journeys of most men."

1922

Hayakawa left Hollywood in 1922. The next decade and a half saw him perform in Japanese and European cinema. In London, Hayakawa starred in The Great Prince Shan (1924) and The Story of Su (1924). In 1925, he wrote a novel, The Bandit Prince, and adapted it into a short play. In 1930, Hayakawa performed in Samurai, a one-act play written specifically for him, in front of Great Britain's King George V and Queen Mary. Hayakawa became widely known in France, where audiences "enthusiastically embraced" him and made his French debut, La Bataille (1923), a critical and financial success. German audiences found Hayakawa "sensational" and in Russia he was considered one of the "wonderful actors" of America. In addition to numerous Japanese films, Hayakawa also produced a Japanese-language stage version of The Three Musketeers. In the initial decades of his career, Hayakawa established himself as the first leading man of Asian descent in American and European cinema. He was also the first non-Caucasian actor to achieve international stardom.

1930

Hayakawa was in a unique position due to his ethnicity and fame in the English-speaking world. Due to naturalization laws of that time, Hayakawa would be unable to become a U.S. citizen and because of anti-miscegenation laws he could not marry someone of another race. In 1930, the Production Code came into effect which forbade portrayals of miscegenation in film. This meant that unless Hayakawa's co-star was an Asian Actress, he would not be able to portray a romance with her.

1931

Hayakawa later transitioned into doing talkies; his sound film debut came in Daughter of the Dragon (1931), starring opposite Chinese American performer Anna May Wong. Hayakawa played a Samurai in the German-Japanese co-production The Daughter of the Samurai (1937). The same year, Hayakawa went to France to perform in Yoshiwara (1937), but ended up trapped in the country and separated from his family when the German occupation of France began in 1940. Hayakawa made few films in the following years, but financially supported himself by selling his watercolor paintings. He joined the French Resistance and helped Allied flyers during World War II.

1949

In 1949, Humphrey Bogart's production company located Hayakawa and offered him a role in Tokyo Joe. Before issuing a work permit, the American Consulate investigated Hayakawa's activities during the war and found that he had in no way contributed to the German war effort. Hayakawa followed Tokyo Joe with Three Came Home (1950), in which he played real-life POW camp commander Lieutenant-Colonel Suga, before returning to France.

1957

After the war, Hayakawa's on-screen roles can best be described as the honorable villain, a figure exemplified by his portrayal of Colonel Saito in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957). The film won the Academy Award for Best Picture and Hayakawa earned a nomination for the Best Supporting Actor; he was also nominated for a Golden Globe for the role. After the film, Hayakawa largely retired from acting. Throughout the following years he performed guest appearances on a handful of television shows and films, making his final performance in the animated film The Daydreamer (1966).

1973

Hayakawa retired from film in 1966. He died in Tokyo on November 23, 1973, from a cerebral thrombosis, complicated by pneumonia. He was buried in the Chokeiji Temple Cemetery in Toyama, Japan.

1989

A musical based on Hayakawa's life, Sessue, played in Tokyo in 1989. In September 2007, the Museum of Modern Art held a retrospective on Hayakawa's work entitled: Sessue Hayakawa: East and West, When the Twain Met. Japanese film Director Nagisa Oshima had planned to create a biopic entitled Hollywood Zen based on Hayakawa's life. The script had been allegedly completed and set to film in Los Angeles, but due to constant delays and the eventual death of Oshima himself in 2013, the project went unrealized.

2014

Hayakawa's early films were not popular in Japan because many felt that his roles portrayed an image of Japanese men being sadistic and cruel. Many Japanese viewers found this portrayal—which made him popular in the U.S.—insulting. Nationalistic groups in particular were censorious. Some Japanese believed that Hayakawa was contributing to increased anti-Japanese sentiment in the U.S., and regarded him as a traitor to the Japanese people. After Hayakawa established himself as an American superstar, the negative tone in the press that regarded him as a national and racial shame almost completely disappeared, and Japanese media started publicizing Hayakawa's cinematic achievements instead.

Some Sessue Hayakawa images

About the author

Lisa Scholfield

As a Senior Writer at Famous Net Worth, I spearhead an exceptional team dedicated to uncovering and sharing the stories of pioneering individuals. My passion for unearthing untold narratives drives me to delve deep into the essence of each subject, bringing forth a unique blend of factual accuracy and narrative allure. In orchestrating the editorial workflow, I am deeply involved in every step—from initial research to the final touches of publishing, ensuring each biography not only informs but also engages and inspires our readership.