Chin Han Quotes

Growing up, I never saw any Asian faces on TV, so it didn't feel like a viable option.

I never grew up thinking, 'Why aren't there any Asians?' But then Lucy Liu came on, and I was like, 'Oh my God, she is my favorite.' I was nothing like her, but I just loved her because she was the only Asian I saw.

Quite honestly, I never thought it would be possible for Asians to make it in the States. But now I feel like it's totally changing. You see so many Asian celebrities now, and more and more of them are taking bigger roles in movies. I feel like everything has changed.

I always think it's really hard if you are Asian or Chinese to be really in Hollywood. There are not so many really great characters for you.

I know when I was growing up in New York, whenever I turned on the television, I never saw a face that looked like me. Whenever there was an Asian person on television, it would be a huge event, me calling to my older sister 'There's an Asian person on television!' It was unheard of back then.

They probably do have an Asian Barbie.

Casting ethnic characters is a very hard thing to do, but it's important. It's also interesting.

Why don't we hear more about and from Asians when it comes to race in America? Are Asians the new Invisible Man - there but not there? In some ways, yeah. Blacks and whites are always carping about the metrics of racism. And any conversation about immigration reform is immediately flipped into a referendum on Hispanics.

I saw 'Joy Luck Club' when it came out, so that was early mid-'90s, and I remember seeing it with my long-time collaborator, Mina Shum. We'd just done 'Double Happiness,' and we saw this movie, and we were weeping. Like, shuddering weeping. Weeping more than really the film deserved.

I hope my daughter will be able to see shows starring Asian people that has nothing to do with an Asian story.

I know Asian actors out there won't even audition for a role that have an accent. But for me, I was the kid with an accent. I still have an accent to some degree.

When I found out that I'm playing Nagini, I thought it was meaningful because it's an important character in the 'Harry Potter' series. 'Harry Potter' is a franchise film with many Caucasian actors, so I thought many Korean viewers would be happy.

The more visibility, the more opportunities for Asian-American actors to play great roles. It goes to the studios opening up roles they might not have considered Asian actors for. The talent is there. I don't think there needs to be one superstar, but having more roles open up, that's the way changes happen.

Other Asian actors, especially American-born actors, sometimes shy away from immigrant roles.

Growing up, my favorite movies were 'Forrest Gump,' 'Shawshank Redemption,' 'Gladiator' - none of them really had Asian leading men.

I do think it's getting better, but I have noticed that Asians are not well represented in awards shows, and not a ton of Asian faces on the big screen either. Perhaps some of the young Asian actors who are on TV series now will be seen in upcoming movies in the near future - Jamie Chung, Constance Wu, Suzy Nakamura, to name a few. Fingers crossed.

It was the television that turned me to film. My parents did take me to Pete's Dragon.

If I'd been asked to play an Asian man [in Doctor Strange] I would've shown them Benedict Wong.

All over the world today people have a very strong desire to find a sense of identity, and at the same time that's coupled with the rise of absolutely absurd wars that relate to ethnic identity. Perhaps there is something deeply ingrained in people that relates to a sense of belonging, and without that, identity doesn't seem as real as it should.

It happens a little bit more in the West, where there's more fluid - where everybody's originally from somewhere else. So they have a little bit more permission to do it. It happens the least, at the individual level at least, in the South, because the South has very strong, you know, set up black churches and white churches and a long history of that, and so it's a bigger social cost.

You know, when Sharpton and I walked in, it was, like, big commotion and everything, but everybody was very nice. And I couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia's restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was - it was exactly the same, even though it's run by blacks, primarily black patronship.

Anything that makes movie-going a magnificent experience, I'm all for.

I was delighted with the film [Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth]; it almost made me want to be a film-maker!

The more the linguistic Babel corroded and disorganized parliament, the closer drew the inevitable hour of the disintegration of this Babylonian Empire, and with it the hour of freedom for my German-Austrian people.

Any film that you see is never just the director. If it's a film that you love, it's not so easy to say, "Oh it's directed by this person - that means everything that person directs is going be wonderful."