Clyde Kusatsu
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| Clyde Kusatsu | |
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| Born | September 13, 1948 Honolulu, Hawaii |
Clyde Kusatsu (born September 13, 1948) is an American character actor.
Kusatsu was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, where he attended Iolani School. Kusatsu began acting in Honolulu summer stock, and after studying theater at Northwestern University, started to make his mark on the small screen in the mid-1970s. Usually mustachioed, with a dapper, professional air, he has most often played doctors, but his repertoire has included a generous sampling of teachers (usually college professors), businessmen, detectives, church ministers and other intelligent, middle-class types. With his quiet, wry line delivery, Kusatsu made a memorably clever and hilarious sparring partner for Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor) on several episodes of All in the Family as the Reverend Chong, refusing to baptize Archie's grandson without the permission of the boy's parents. During this period Kusatsu also worked with the Asian American theatre group East West Players in Los Angeles.
Kusatsu was subsequently a regular on several series, but neither the adventure Bring 'Em Back Alive (1982–83) nor the Hawaiian-set medical drama Island Son (1989–90) (in which he played one of Richard Chamberlain's colleagues) lasted very long. His many television movies have included the film adaptation of Farewell to Manzanar (1976), about Japanese American internment during World War II. (Kusatsu also guest-starred on an episode of Lou Grant on Japanese American internment}; Golden Land (1988), a Hollywood-set drama based on a William Faulkner story; and the AIDS drama And the Band Played On (1993). He appeared in four M*A*S*H episodes and later starred in the short-lived ABC series All American Girl (1994–95), the first Asian American family sitcom.
Feature roles, beginning with Midway (1976), have generally been small, but in the 1990s Kusatsu had roles in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (1993, as a history teacher) and In the Line of Fire (1993, as a Secret Service agent). He appeared as an high school English teacher in American Pie (1999). He currently plays the recurring role of Dr. Dennis Okamura on the CBS soap opera The Young and the Restless. Kusatsu starred in Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (2008) as Mr. Lee.
Kusatsu is married to Gayle Kusatsu; they have two sons, Kevin and Andrew.
[edit] External links
- Clyde Kusatsu at the Internet Movie Database
- Clyde Kusatsu article at Memory Alpha, a Star Trek wiki
- Clyde Kusatsu 2008 interview on Asiance Magazine online
