Actor, performer, and filmmaker Keo Woolford, who wrote and directed the independent film The Haumana (2013) and had a recurring part on CBS’s Hawaii Five-O reboot, died on Monday, according The Hollywood Reporter. He was 49. Woolford, who was a Honolulu native, began his career as a performer touring in the Hawaiian boy band Brown Skin and, later, starring as the King of Siam in over 300 productions of The King and I. He adapted his one man show, I-Land, into The Haumana, which followed the story of a struggling Waikiki Polynesian performer who unexpectedly takes over teaching a high school boy’s hula class after his former instructor died. Haumana received the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival’s special jury prize for best feature. Woolford is most recognizable, however, for his part as Detective James Chang in Hawaii Five-O and small supporting roles in movies like Happy, Texas (1999) and Godzilla (2014). Woolford died in a hospital in Oahu, Hawaii, after a stroke.
