Sliding into a booth of a Koreatown restaurant, and lighting up a Marlboro Light, Tamlyn Tomita says, "Let's just make up the whole interview, I mean, a thousand words on me? What can you possibly write about?" Tomita, who has starred in such films as The Joy Luck Club and Miramax's just-released Picture Bride. might feel her life doesn't warrant such attention; her colleagues and friends paint a different picture. "Working with Tamlyn was amazing," says Kayo Hatta, Picture Bride's director. "It was a tough shoot, but she's a professional. She set an example for everyone on the set - she never complained, and didn't want to be treated like a star. What an actor. What a human being. I'd work with her again in a second." In the film, Tomita plays Kana, a Japanese American picture bride working in the cane fields of Hawaii. Having immigrated to the islands several years before Riyo, the film's lead character (played by Youki Kudoh of Mystery Train), she's a mentor, an older sister, and a sort of spiritual guide through the film, which won the prestigious Audience Award at this year's Sundance Festival. "Kana's come to accept her life of hard work, toiling in the fields andliving with an abusive husband," Tomita says. "she's living for the sake of her child. And when her child's life is no longer there, she finds another to pass her life force on to. She finds Riyo." Playing a poor sugarcane worker in a film made on a shoestring budget by Hollywood's standards represented a drastic change for Tamlyn, who'd just come off The Joy Luck Club- where she played the part of the well-coifed, urbane Waverly. "Despite the hardships of filming, [Picture Bride] was extremely rewarding because you knew you were doing something for the sake of a bigger story," Tomita says. "This is about fulfilling an obligation to legacies left to us. This is the story of the picture brides that came over- it was something that needed to be told. Coming as we did out of Hollywood, we weren't treated the way we were accustomed to because we had no money! So all of that became important." Because of her turns in more "glamorous" projects like Joy Luck Club, Come See The Paradise and her debut feature The Karate Kid Part II, it would be easy to conjecture that taking on the decidedly unglamorous role of Kana might have been a conscious decision to play against her image. "Nothing in my career's calculated, what are you talking about?" she laughs, puffing away at her cigarette. "The main thing I look for in choosing a project is just a good story." From the woman left disfigured after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in the PBS Wonderworks special Hiroshima Maiden ("My fondest role," Tomita says) to more recent turns as a Beatnik of sorts in independent filmmaker Kenn Kashima's ten minute short Notes On A Scale and Antonio (Interview With A Vampire) Banderas' wife in the upcoming Quentin Tarantino-produced anthology film Four Rooms, a closer look at her career reveals the diversity of the characters she's portrayed. "I don't know where the glamorous image comes from, " she says. "People have also told me that they thought I was aloof at first. I admit that I can be those things, but maybe it comes from the fact that I'm probably more of a private person than I think I am. But I'm a lot more things than the roles I've played." One of the things that people might not know about Tamlyn Tomita is that by all accounts, she has what some might consider an obscene sense of humor. "Oh, she's totally raunchy," Hatta says. "She's an L.A. homegirl!" As if to prove this point, Tomita laughs easily throughout the interview. This usually happens after she makes a crude remark, or tells a particularly base story- most of which is unprintable here, not so much because of the nature of the statements, but because she doesn't want to embarass the other parties involved. This is how she explains her lewd sense of humor: She uses it to shock a situation into sensitivity. "If I say something," she says, "if I make a joke, suggest a lewd actor do something people might consider improper, it's just to get people thinking about something like sex in a different way." Yeah, right. Now this is how Tomita explains her lewd sense of humor when pressed further. "oh, let's be honest, it's because I have a fucking one track mind," she says laughing. "I'm always thinking about sex. I love sex." By all accounts, Tomita is an intelligent, thoughtful, and unpredictable person- someone who can comfortably tell a dirty joke in one breath, then just as easily sliip into a conversation about history, politics, literature, or the relationship between spirituality and religion in the next. By all accounts, she's also someone who understands her role in the community. "She's probably one of the few big Asian American names who's always in touch with the community," says Jusak Yang Bernhard, an actor and coproducer of the Asian American Player's Guide, who is a close friend of Tomita's. "She's always willing to give back and understand that she needs the support of the Asian American community, and needs to support them in return." "I feel like I have a responsibility to make sure my characters aren't stereotypes," she says. "I'm not saying I'm this important person, but I have to recognize that I have some sort of position; that I have a responsibility to myself and to those who might see me as somebody to look up to." For inquiring minds, here are two or three more things about Tamlyn Tomita you might not know: 1.) Shortly after the release of Karate Kid II she attempted to pursue a singing career in Japan ("I tried it. Thank God it didn't work out," she says.) 2.) If there were an evil version of her in an alternate universe, she would be the dictator of the universe ("I wouldn't listen to anyone else's opinion.") 3.) She has many affectionate nicknames that friends call her, including "Fearless" ("Because she's such a tough woman," says Hatta); "Gyoza face" (after playing disfigured women in both Hiroshima Maiden and the TV series Vanishing Son); "Toots" (after a particularly embarassing moment while performing on stage); and "Literati" (I'm a very literal person,") she says. Oh, and 4.) Her definition of paradise is simple: "a place where everybody can get along." Still, even with all these interesting tidbits of information about her, Tomita still doesn't feel that there's enough for a story, suggesting once again that we fabricate the whole interview. "Let's make something playing up the whole image of me being glamorous," she suggests. So this would be Tamlyn Tomita's version of the interview: Tamlyn steps out of a stretch limousine in a long, expensive evening gown, perfectly made up and accompanied by two huge bodyguards. She glides into the restarurant and elegantly slips into the corner booth where the interview is to take place. She apologizes to the journalist bercause she can only talk for a few minutes- before being whisked away to Paris in her private jet. Tomita laughs. She realizes how silly the invented scenario sounds. But then, she doesn't seem like the kind of person who cares about ther image or who would calculate her career for maximum effect. "I remember after Karate Kid II, Helen Funai, who was my manager for awhile, said I needed to start thinking about my career, about what I wanted to do." Tomita remembers. "I started laughing and said, 'I'm only going to be in this business for a year.' And she started laughing, 'For a year? You're either going to be addicted to this, or you're just going to leave it behind.' So, we see each other once in awhile, and she tells me, 'It's been ten years and you thought you were only going to be in this business for a year.' And I go, 'Yeah, I must be pretty stupid.'" And once again, Tamlyn Tomita's laughter fills the room.