A martial arts expert, Mako later appeared in many standard-issue action films such as "Armed Response" (1986), "Silent Assassins" (1988) and "The Perfect Weapon" (1991), and played many Hawaiians onscreen, as in--appropriately enough--"The Hawaiians" (1970) and the TV series "Hawaiian Heat" (1984). He played Akiro the wizard in Arnold Schwarzenegger's two "Conan" extravaganzas, but his more interesting roles have been in such offbeat items as "Tucker: The Man and His Dream" (1988); "The Wash" (1988), about the effects of divorce on a Japanese-American family; and "An Unremarkable Life" (1989), as a Chinese-American garage owner who disrupts the lives of two elderly sisters. More recently, he co-starred in one segment of the Showtime TV-movie "Riot" (1997), which examined the 1992 L.A. riots from the points of view of various city residents.