My parents are Vietnamese refugees; they left Vietnam after the war. They were part of the boat people, and they ended up in a refugee camp in Thailand after being on the water for three days, and I was born at that refugee camp in Thailand.
Hong Chau
The first time I went to Chicago was on a family road trip. We had our dog with us, and when we hit Chicago, I couldn't believe how many people kept coming up to us, telling us how handsome our dog was! He's a Rottweiler-Australian Shepherd mix, and he is a good-looking dog, but obviously Chicago is very dog-friendly.
I did a regional car commercial and an internet potato chip commercial. I was seriously thinking I needed to quit and get a serious job where I can feed myself and it doesn't kill my soul.
That's what I want to continue to do: really odd films, with interesting filmmakers.
I love Chicago for several reasons, but one of the best is that I was so intrigued that you have wild rabbits running around in the city. I never had seen bunnies in such a large urban environment before.
I think one in five Americans has a disability of some sort. That's 20% of the population, and yet we rarely ever see people with disabilities on-screen, and their stories and their resilience and their zest for life and their humor and their humanity.
I grew up around Vietnamese refugees, around people who don't speak English as a first language.
If anyone has to leave their homeland by boat, they all have difficult stories. But my parents had a difficult journey, and their story always seems like a movie to me.
When you see something that needs to be done, you do it.
I really want to work on characters that have a lot of complexity and you don't always get that in comic book movies because they're not character explorations. I have nothing against movies like that, but I do see them as kind of like a cheeseburger.
Americans have a wonderful way of just butchering everyone's names.
My parents speak with an accent. A lot of people that I know speak with an accent. I have friends who speak with an accent. Accents in a vacuum aren't a problem; it's how you portray those characters and how well they're served in a script.
I never like to sit and discuss my character, the other character, our relationship, or anything like that. I feel like if I did my job and I trust that the other person has done theirs, you just go on set, play around with it, chew the scene for a little bit; then we roll, and that's it.
In Hollywood, there's not a ton of roles for Asian people. So a lot of it is waiting and waiting and waiting.
We are surrounded by people with accents because America is a nation of immigrants. Beyond that, the people who made your iPhone and the shirt on your back are probably Asians, and we're really not that disconnected from each other; we have very intimate relationships with the world, whether or not we realize it.
I think that a lot of actors of color have said that it's a wonderful thing to play a role that doesn't have a race and that is kind of open to any sort of interpretation. I completely understand that, but at the same time, I just want Asian characters that are well-written.
I don't like being watched, and I don't like being told what to do, so acting is a very poor professional choice.
I appreciate people who sway to the beat of their own tambourine, like Iris Apfel and Helena Bonham Carter.
Part of me, even when I was trying to get acting jobs, I was still kind of thinking, 'Oh I should do something else with my life.'
I love public transportation! Who wants to sit in a car and be angry at other drivers for eight hours? I'd rather sit on a bus or train and read a book.
In life, we are all more than one thing, but for some reason in movies, you're either this or that. It reduces the complexity of a human being in so many ways.
Asian-Americans, we're not a monolithic group. There might be some Asians who are second-generation, third-generation, who may not speak the language that their parents or their grandparents spoke.
It's nice to have a quiet movie to give you time to meditate on an idea. A lot of movies don't give you the space to feel anything.
With 'Downsizing,' a lot of the discussion hasn't been about the film itself, but about cultural and political conversations happening outside of it. It's being digested in the context of the time.
I don't want to put on any gimmicky layers just to give the character more definition. I just want to play good characters. It doesn't matter to me if it's 'open ethnicity' or 'specifically Asian.'
I don't have any special skills or any hidden talents. I don't.
I walk on eggshells, and I care too much about what people think, and I'm afraid to ask for things.
For me, I do my best work when I feel completely relaxed and not being judged.
Growing up the way I did, being an actor in Hollywood was definitely never a plausible career choice at all.
When British or Australian actors perform American characters, we laud them and talk about how great it is they are able to do this other accent that is not their own. Americans have different relationships with other accents.
I'm really into ghost towns. I've driven cross-country the past few summers, and I would stop at some ghost towns along the way. They're like a microcosm of America as a whole.
I grew out of the habit of thinking or worrying about being seen as the typical Asian. I don't even know what that means anymore. I'm not really concerned with it.
I like to be very simple in my lifestyle. My only extravagance is... I buy lots of toys and meats for my dog.
I fell into acting because I was really shy, and so at night after work, I took public speaking and improv classes, and I started going to auditions sort of as a dare. That was my version of 'Fear Factor.'
My first job out of college was at PBS as an administrative assistant. I thought I would be on the production side of things.
Giving people the opportunity to sit in a dark theater together and have emotions in public, whether they're laughing or crying - that's what makes me happy.
I love films that aren't just speaking to certain moments in the culture but are something that people can revisit.
Public libraries were a huge source of comfort and joy for me when I was growing up. I still spend time there.
I don't want anyone to think I took this role in 'Downsizing' because it was the only role available to me. I'm not a passive participant in it.
For a good part of my childhood, we were super poor and lived in government housing. I don't characterize the American dream as being successful and having a lot of material wealth to show for it. I did fine without it for a really long time.
I grew up speaking Vietnamese - that was my first language because my parents didn't speak any English, and I didn't learn English until I started school.
People who I've encountered who have had more given to them, they tend to be more disappointed and unable to carry on when something doesn't go their way, and that's not my parents.
I'm never concerned about being first or on trend. I only want to feel like my most rad 'me.'
On 'Downsizing,' I had a trailer, and I got to bring my dog to work, and I thought, 'I've made it: I'm bringing my dog to work.'
