LIHUE — Joshua “Li’i Boy” Shintani of Waimea, known for his “big heart,” for being happy and for his role in “Shallow Hal,” died of advanced pneumonia on Oahu on Nov. 25. He was 32.
“He was a gullible, happy person,” said his mother, Sandy Shintani. “He was always helping out his siblings. Giving what he could.”
Shintani was best known for his role in the 2001 comedy “Shallow Hal,” which starred Jack Black and Gwyneth Paltrow. Director Peter Farrelly discovered Joshua while he was standing outside the Waimea Public Library playing his ukulele.
“He loved playing ukulele,” Sandy said. “When he got discovered, he thought it was a joke. A prank. He came and told me that I had to call this person. I told him, ‘Li’i Boy, these kind of things don’t happen to us.’ But fortunately it did.”
She called her uncle to help take Li’i Boy to a lunch meeting with the director, still thinking it was a prank. Three days later, Joshua was flying to LA.
Sandy said Joshua always had a big heart and was a humble person.
Even after he was discovered during his senior year in high school, he never changed his personality. He was still the same Joshua, she said. He was just happy to be going to the Mainland for the first time, she said. And she was proud of him.
“Even if he wasn’t discovered, I would still be proud of him,” Sandy said.
Joshua had been suffering from symptoms of pneumonia for about a month when his mother took him to Kauai Veterans Memorial Hospital in Waimea on Nov. 16. Staff treated him there until he was transferred to Wilcox Memorial Hospital in Lihue.
Joshua stayed at Wilcox for a couple of days, but his symptoms progressed, his mother said.
A week before Thanksgiving, doctors medevac’d Joshua to Straub Hospital on Oahu. He died one day before Thanksgiving.
“It’s a Thanksgiving that I’m never, ever going to forget,” Sandy said. “I have to take it one day at a time. Be strong for my children.”
Joshua was born on Oahu at Kapiolani Hospital on June 24, 1983, but was raised on Kauai.
He lived with his mother, three sisters and one brother in Kekaha. Another sister lives in Waimea. He attended Waimea High School in the 1990s and early 2000s. He also went to Kauai Community College in the early 2000s. “Shallow Hal” was his only movie.
Funeral services will be held later this month on Kauai.
