In December 1915, newspaper advertisements boasted of a new film called The Cheat, starring the renowned stage actress Fannie Ward in her first on-screen role. Little mentioned was the male lead, a Japanese actor named Sessue Hayakawa who had, up until recently, been playing small parts. Within a week of the film’s release, all that would change.

The Los Angeles Times soon praised Hayakawa as “one of the best bits of acting seen on the screen.” Variety took things a step further, adding that, “the work of Sessue Hayakawa is so far above the acting of Miss Ward . . . that he really should be the star in the billing of the film.” The New York Times issued the greatest endorsement by far: “Miss Ward might learn something to help her fulfill her destiny as a great tragedienne of the screen by observing the man who acted the Japanese villain in her picture.”

In the film, Edith (Ward), a society woman, loses money pledged to the Red Cross in a bad investment. Ashamed and desperate to hide this debt from her husband, she turns to her neighbor, Tori (Hayakawa), a somewhat mysterious yet alluring Japanese art dealer, who agrees to put up the money in exchange for what can only be understood as sexual favors. Their arrangement takes an even darker turn when Edith tries to end it.

The Cheat was a massive box office hit with moviegoers and critics alike, raking in more than $120,000 ($3.7 million today) and launching Hayakawa’s Hollywood career in the process. Its lurid tale of an interracial, extramarital affair gone wrong titillated audiences across the country in an era when miscegenation was not only taboo, but illegal. “RISQUE? TO BE SURE!!!” crowed one of the ads. Director Cecil B. DeMille admitted as much, stating, “It was a rather daring theme for its time.”

Hayakawa’s smoldering good looks didn’t hurt either. The fact that he was already married to fellow actor Tsuru Aoki seemed to melt away in the face of his growing fandom. As Hollywood historian Carla Valderrama writes in This Was Hollywood, “the film cemented Sessue as a major star and as one of Hollywood’s first male sex symbols”—predating “Latin Lover” Rudolph Valentino by many years.

By 1917, Hayakawa had achieved international fame. His name was uttered in the same breath as Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin. The lauded Japanese photographer Toyo Miyatake once observed Hayakawa on his way to a premiere. As he rose to exit his limousine, the actor noticed a puddle of water on the street. No sooner had he grimaced at the thought of dirtying his expensive shoes in the mud than “dozens of female fans surrounding his car fell over one another to spread their fur coats at his feet.” Miyatake marveled that “white women were willing to give themselves to a Japanese man ... Never again will there be a star like Sessue.”

Despite Hayakawa’s stardom, his parts were limited because of his race. “Public acceptance of me in romantic roles was a blow of sorts against racial intolerance,” Hayakawa wrote in his memoir, “even though I lost the girl in the last reel.” He was frequently cast as the evil “Oriental,” roles that played into pernicious stereotypes about the Japanese.

This did not go unnoticed by his countrymen back home in Japan, or by local Japanese Americans who protested The Cheat’s negative depiction of Japanese people. The Rafu Shimpo, a Japanese newspaper in Los Angeles, reported an increase in anti-Japanese assaults following the release of the film.

In Japan, the media labeled Hayakawa a “traitor” and “a cooperator in anti-Japanese propaganda films.” Such complaints eventually led to the re-release of the film in 1918 to change Hayakawa’s character’s nationality from Japanese to Burmese, along with revised intertitles.

“Often typecast as the villainous forbidden lover, in 1918 Hayakawa started his own production company Haworth Pictures Corporation in order to have more control over his roles,” explains Cathy Matos, a private Hayakawa collector. He also made history doing so. “Haworth was Hollywood’s first Asian-owned production company, and produced 23 films that were largely star vehicles for Hayakawa.”

His popularity at the box office peaked in 1919, however, and Haworth was short-lived. In 1920, Hayakawa reduced production by half. Meanwhile, his control over the company and his image began to wane as distribution partner Robertson-Cole took an increased interest in running the outfit. Within a few years, he would resign and leave Hollywood amidst rising anti-Japanese sentiment, traveling first to New York to try his hand at theater, and later France to make several films.

Like many early Hollywood stars, Hayakawa’s once brilliant star power quickly faded. Over the ensuing decades, he was occasionally called back to Hollywood for specific roles. In 1931, he made his sound debut in the Fu Manchu spectacle starring Anna May Wong, Daughter of the Dragon. Then, after surviving World War II stranded in Vichy France, Humphrey Bogart initiated a search for Hayakawa and cast him as the heavy in his 1948 film Tokyo Joe.

In 1956, Hayakawa had an official comeback in the film he is best remembered for today, The Bridge on the River Kwai. In it, he played Colonel Saito, a Japanese military officer tasked with overseeing the construction of a bridge to Burma. The role earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. At age 71, Hayakawa was in demand once more, and he spent the next few years making films, before retiring and returning to Japan.

Looking back at his legacy, Hayakawa scholar and University of California, San Diego professor Daisuke Miyao says, “Sessue Hayakawa, the first Asian star of Hollywood, was a master of a balancing act between two polar images of Japanese immigrants: a mysterious foreigner with an exotic cultural background ('Japonisme') and a sophisticated gentleman who would not endanger the moral code of the United States ('Americanization').” His career is a potent reminder of the challenges actors of color still face today, which makes his status as Hollywood’s first heartthrob all the more worth celebrating.