Early on, I played a Chinese delivery person, and even that, which was very innocuous, felt like I was somehow betraying myself. I felt very self-conscious on set doing that role, with a crew that was almost entirely white.
— John Cho
To be able to communicate with people on the other side of the globe is interesting, in an instant.
I like to flip flop, but making your days work to find a laugh is a really good way to spend a day. I appreciate it more going away and then coming back to it.
I've been called a funny person for a long time. I don't know that I know anything about comedic acting.
Ninety per cent of being a parent is just being present and available.
I accept what people say. I don't have time to dissect it.
The Asian-American kids I meet respond to a democracy in the vulgarity of my roles.
That's what it is: a 'Harold & Kumar' movie is a romance between two best friends.
When you're not born in this country, you kind of study how people talk and how they act, and you try and break things down.
I had a stereotype in my mind of what a 'Star Trek' fans is, but I couldn't have been more wrong.
There is a real Harold Lee.
When I first started acting in college, at Cal, the thing that I loved about acting was not being onstage but going into rehearsals. The thing, as I look back on it now, that I was most attracted to, was that I felt like I'd found my family. It was just a bunch of loonies.
I got sort of sick of seeing Asians being the blank, bland real estate agent or something. I didn't care. It didn't mean anything to me.
I've had an unusual career in that I've never had a big break, but the rent always seemed to get paid.
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.
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.
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.
I think obviously the 'Harold and Kumar' stuff is trying to lean head first into the raunch.
I don't know if I trust entertainment to teach anyone anything.
I have an affinity for comedy because I like to watch them. It's an honor to make comedies because I love being able to pop something into the DVD player and laugh. I love doing it.
When you get something off the ground, it's fantastic, and you feel really close to that group of people.
Typically, actors overplay jargon or toss it away in an extravagant display of casualness. Real people hit the important parts hard.
I don't feel comfortable as an insider.
I wanted to do 'Manzanar' because I'd never done anything like it before. The spoken word there is between a drama and an essay, and I'd never worked in concert with an orchestra.
I write, and I sing, and I play a little guitar. I mean, it's tiny. Ba-dump-bum!
As an immigrant, I learned by watching other people.
What's impressed me about 'Star Trek' fans is how many generations they span and how many nations they represent. They are all over the place.
I think the ability to emphasize is, in large part, what makes me a man and not a boy.
I need my comedy to offend. That's my personal views.
One of the things I like about comedy in general is that it affords Asian Americans the opportunity to not be noble.
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.
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.
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.
Actors are supposed to be these runaways that get in a covered wagon filled with hats and tambourines and go from town to town making people smile.
I campaigned for Obama, and that was such a big component of getting the vote out, was social media.
I don't know what the next frontier is, but good comedy should put its toe into taboo waters. You have to transgress a little bit, and that area shifts with culture and with the year.
I'm not a good improv-er, which is what a lot of comedic actors are really good at. I have failed miserably when I've been asked to improvise.
Everyone posts everything in real time as it happens.
The biggest boss has the clearest desk.
The worst thing for a kid is to move around and switch schools, but as an actor, you go from job to job, meeting strangers and becoming very close right away. I've become adept at that.
There was a while where every role I was getting offered was extremely noble - like the judge or the kindly nurse.
I think about John Lennon all the time. What would John Lennon do? What would John Lennon say if he got this part? How would he act? I don't know, but he's my moral barometer.
Asians narratively in shows are insignificant. They're the cop or the waitress or whatever it is. You see them in the background.
I get called Harold the most. I think maybe 'Harold & Kumar' fans don't know my name, and 'Star Trek' fans do know my name... Harold fans are vocal!
It just seemed hedonistic when I first started acting. It was a pleasurable thing. But as I look back on it now, I understand that it was a journey of the self for me.
I like that guy Matthew Perry a lot.
As long as the rent's getting paid, you don't think about getting out of the game.
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.
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.
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.