Sonny Chiba, star of 'Kill Bill', dies of covid-19

Sonny Chiba as Hattori Hanzo in Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill: Vol. 1".

(CNN) -

Shin'ichi "Sonny" Chiba's fighting style was less athletic than shockingly brutal.

Chiba, a martial arts movie star in his native Japan, made a name for himself by throwing heart-attack blows and stabbing fictional enemies in the throat with just his fingers.

His relentless on-screen image inspired action authors such as director Quentin Tarantino and actor Keanu Reeves to emulate his style in their own works, and thrilled viewers when they did not cover their eyes.

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Chiba, a fiercely talented martial artist whose international renown grew with films like "The Street Fighter" and "Kill Bill," died this week of complications from Covid-19, his representative Timothy Beal confirmed to CNN.

He was 82 years old.

Japanese actor Sonny Chiba, a martial arts film icon, died of complications from Covid-19.

His style earned him famous admirers

Chiba, born Sadaho Maeda, got his start in martial arts training with Mas Oyama, considered a karate master.

And he mastered it.

Chiba earned several black belts during his time under Oyama's wing, according to Variety.

He didn't show his martial arts skills on screen until 1973, in the movie "Karate Kiba."

Comparisons with the famous Hong Kong American martial artist Bruce Lee were inevitable. But Chiba's distinctive fighting style was unlike anything Lee tried. Chiba was enraged at his enemies and seemed to use more force to deliver his punches, a method that de-emphasized the choreographed nature of the films. And his characters almost always killed their opponents.

Any similarities to Lee were smashed with the 1974 release of the surprisingly violent international hit "The Street Fighter," in which Chiba, as martial arts mercenary Takuma Tsurugi, punches a man hard enough to cause him to lose several teeth and crush the skull of another.

The protagonists of Chiba were ruthless antiheroes who were willing to shed blood, a character trait in many contemporary action films.

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"For me, the most fun role to play is the bad boy," he said in a 2007 interview with Jonathan Ross.

He said a particularly brutal scene that he later cut to an X-ray of a skull after Chiba's character crushed him was his idea, a solution to show the damage from a hit without attempting the hit itself, he said.

Chiba's style earned him famous admirers such as Tarantino, who first referenced the great martial artist in the 1993 film "True Romance," for which he wrote the script.

Chiba would later appear in the director's two films "Kill Bill."

Quentin Tarantino (left) praised Chiba in his films.

In "True Romance," Christian Slater's Clarence Worley calls Chiba "without exception the best actor working in martial arts movies today."

He was kinder than his fearsome movie roles showed.

Chiba had a prolific career in film and television, with more than 200 credits on IMDb.

Western audiences may have seen him in 2006's "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift," in which he played a ruthless Yakuza boss, but most of the movies and series he did in the latter part of his career were premieres in Japan.

Chiba had another movie in the works before her death, Beal, her manager, said in an email to CNN.

However, despite what his roles would have the public believe, Chiba was a "humble, loving and friendly man," Beal said.

That became apparent in a 2015 interview with Keanu Reeves.

The action star of "The Matrix" and "John Wick" told a Japanese media outlet that Chiba was one of the best actors in martial arts movies.

Chiba then surprised Reeves during the interview and praised "John Wick", visibly delighting him.

"Character and action ... you brought them together," Reeves told him.

"There was always heart in [Chiba's characters]."

Chiba joked that he could learn a thing or two from Reeves, although you could say that Chiba created the model that artists like Reeves tried to follow for decades.

Chiba, as Takuma Tsurugi, ripped throats with his bare hands before Reeves, in his role as John Wick, could creatively kill his adversaries with a pencil.

He never made it look easy - his characters' faces betrayed the pain he felt as often as he did his enemies, but the ambivalent tone he gave in his performances inspired much of the action that viewers today adore.

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