American - Actor | June 16, 1972 - 6
Because I sidestepped all the stereotypical roles, in a way I've made a career out of not being Asian - a lot of my roles weren't written as Asian - so there's an impulse in me that wants to take a U-turn and play a very grounded, real Asian character, maybe an immigrant.
John Cho
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I've found that one's language abilities, especially for Korean kids like me, get frozen at the age you immigrated. So I've always associated Korea with being a child and being infantilized through my inability to speak.
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Culture is this thing that exists apart from our real life but is something we all have tacitly agreed to in America. And what film and television do, particularly in this country, is lay out the characters involved in this invisible agreement and dictate who and what can participate.
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I feel like there's this need that the Asian-American community has to feel like people. It's something that Asians in Asia do not understand about us.
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My wife and I were worried, when we had our firstborn, about how he was going to think of himself in a mostly white neighborhood. Particularly Asian men, I feel, we suffer more than Asian women, because we're told we're not worth anything in general.
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What was exciting to me in talking to Kogonada was I was just very convinced that he was a very real and pure artist. He was so uninterested in the commercial game.
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Sometimes I feel indie directors are in the game so they can make a film to get hired to do a big film - that we're all doing this person's reel.
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That's a huge part of being a human being: looking for love and finding a partner in this world. When you constantly play characters who don't have that life, it feels incomplete and not totally human.
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Even though there's a lot of horror from Asia in the American cinematic tradition, I hadn't seen Asians at the center of it.
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I've had an unusual career in that I've never had a big break, but the rent always seemed to get paid.
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As long as the rent's getting paid, you don't think about getting out of the game.
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One of the things I like about comedy in general is that it affords Asian Americans the opportunity to not be noble.
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