Patti Yasutake (BioShock: Infinite, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth), a playwright and actress who has starred in Beef, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: First Contact has passed away at age 70, The Hollywood Reporter confirms. Kyle Fritz (Tea with Alice, Group), Yasutake’s manager, commented that Yasutake died Monday, August 5, 2024, at UCLA Santa Monica Medical Center after battling a rare form of T-cell lymphoma.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Fritz reminisced about his professional partnership with Yasutake, stating, “Patti was my first client when I began over 30 years ago. We enjoyed every day we got to work together, and I will miss her spirit, talent and tenacity but most of all her friendship.”
Yasutake’s life began on September 6, 1953, and she was raised in Gardena, CA, and Inglewood, CA. The SoCal native earned a degree in theater from the University of California, Los Angeles. Yasutake then jump-started her acting career with the East West Players theater company, working “with the Oscar-nominated actor Mako — later her co-star in The Wash — for six years,” per The Hollywood Reporter.
Yasutake’s legacy lives on through her artistic performances, moving from theatrical performances to on-screen acting. Yasutake was the theater director responsible for world premieres, taking on the task of both staging and developing various plays via The Hollywood Reporter. At the Richmond Shepherd Theater, she worked on The Single Man. For the East West Players, she worked on Doughball. For the Ensemble Studio Theater, she worked on Father, I Must Have Rice. For the Odyssey Theatre, Yasutake produced a reiteration of Tea.
Yasutake’s love for the theater also led to her directing “workshop presentations at the Mark Taper Forum, Arizona Theater Company, Los Angeles Theater Center and Geffen Playhouse,” per The Hollywood Reporter. Following Yasutake’s passing, the East West Players Theater Company will be hosting a memorial in her honor and accepting donations in her memory.
In Yasutake’s on-screen career, she notably embodied the role of “a relocated Japanese wife earnestly trying to Americanize in the Ron Howard-directed Gung Ho (1986) and on its ABC series adaptation that lasted just nine episodes in 1986-87” via The Hollywood Reporter. She continued to shine as Starfleet officer Nurse Ogawa in Star Trek: The Next Generation in 16 episodes from 1990 to 1994. She then reprised her role in 1996 as Nurse Ogawa in Star Trek: First Contact.
Yasutake made her streaming debut on the hit Netflix drama-thriller Beef last year, which was listed at number four on Mxdwn’s Top 10 Television Shows of 2023. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Yasutake took on the role of the strong-willed mother to the character George Nakai, played by Joseph Lee (Searching, Star Trek: Picard) in Beef, and the mother-in-law of Amy Lau, played by Ali Wong (Always Be My Maybe, Birds of Prey).