Sung Kang Quotes

The western has always been, for me, the bread and butter. It's the easiest place for an identifiable Native American to be able to work. But I do yearn to be known as an actor rather than a 'Native American actor.'

As an actor, you read so many scripts and parts written for Asian-specific characters, and you see a lot of stereotypes and a lot of one-note characters, especially in comedy.

If you don't look like Rupert Graves or Hugh Grant, they'll have you playing the gardener.

Throughout most of my life, I've tried to downplay my Chinese heritage because I wanted so much to be an American. I was the only Asian kid in my elementary school, and I longed to be like everyone else. I insisted on American food; I was embarrassed by my mother's poor English.

I'm so sick of people misunderstanding Asians in America and what we're about.

Coming in and out of Hollywood for pilot season, I may have to thicken my accent or hear that, physically, I'm not Latino. I not only am, but there's another 50,000 people who look exactly like me.

It's gotten to the point where it's big news when I don't do a horror film.

Hollywood likes to put actors in boxes, and it likes to put Asian actors in really small boxes.

I'm kind of in a middle space, being marketed as a biracial actor. Roles are written either stereotypically black, or they're written 'normal,' which is just code for white.

If you're a sexy actress, it's hard to get serious roles. You get offered the same thing they've seen you in. People are like sheep, and they're like, 'Oh, that's what she does well.'

I was offered, within one year, three different witch roles. It was almost like the world was saying - or the studios were saying - 'We don't know what to do with you.'

I couldn't get roles as bad guys. They could see John Travolta as a gangster but not me, really. But, you know, that's just how things are.

Parts for Asians are hard enough to get, and if Tee, which sounds kind of generically Asian, helps me get roles, so be it.

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.

In Hollywood, I was never restricted to just one Asian character. I've been cast as a Chinese, a Vietnamese, a Korean, a Japanese and a Cambodian.

I'm not foreign enough to play foreigners... I have sort of a mid-Atlantic British accent that puts me in the middle of everything, so they don't know quite where to put me.

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

As a community, we're fighting for Asians to play Asian roles. And then there's the other battle, which is Asian Americans playing roles that aren't written for Asians, and I think that's something that completely should happen; Why can't an Asian American male just play a leading cop figure... or the Matt Damon roles?

The truth is, one can work for another ten years and be playing parts, pushing yourself as hard as you can, and you are still accused of that. You're still tainted with that brush. I'm not called Jude Law, I have three names; I'm called 'Hunk Jude Law'.

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.

There were so few examples of Asian or Asian-American lead characters on American TV or even in the movies. And the ones that have existed for so long were either stereotypical or offensive in some way, or just not reflective of the lives of people in the community.

As an Asian guy, I would love to see a big blockbuster with Asian lead characters.

I would be criticized, like, 'You don't talk Korean enough. You sound very American. You sound very white in your music.' And I'm like, 'Whoa.'

Being a young actor in the industry, I had a lot of people who strongly advised me to stay quiet. That was hard to live with. But I've never played a gay role before, and I didn't want to be limited by some strange perception.

When 'Joy Luck Club' came out, I kind of became a role model for the Asian acting community. I started to talk at colleges and emcee charity things. I'm much more connected to my sense of being Asian now.