John Cho Quotes

The more roles there are, the more actors there are.

I’ve had an unusual career in that I’ve never had a big break, but the rent always seemed to get paid.

Good things will come from self-expression.

I have a few go-to moves like jazz hands, shake the booty, stupid eyes. It was once a mating ritual, but now it’s all about looking silly and making the kids smile.

I personally would love to see Harold and Kumar with children. I think that would be hilarious.

The scariest thing is to go into a new situation for myself, and yet I have a job where I do that every few months, meet a hundred new people, and then have to perform in a very highly pressurized environment.

With ‘The Exorcist,’ a lot of things went into it. I hadn’t seen the show until they asked me, and then I checked the show out and thought it was very well done.

I have this nightmare that one day I will have to look at every picture I’ve ever taken with people in an airport or in bars or restaurants, and it will make me very sad.

It’s so funny that Hollywood has become so entrenched in its formulas. Because what I’ve experienced is that the good stuff comes from places you don’t expect.

I think obviously the ‘Harold and Kumar’ stuff is trying to lean head first into the raunch.

Sometimes I feel like I don’t dream big enough.

I think Hollywood acts like followers of culture and is constantly seeking to follow trends.

Lost’ was a phenomenon, like Elvis.

I try to play the stiff, as much as I can, and play it dry, which is sometimes hard for me. My problem with comedy is to want to clown it up, but she’s the funny one. Those are her jokes, not mine. For me, it’s a lot of not doing anything. I just don’t want to muck it up.

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’m not a natural-born actor. So it’s been a very slow learning curve for me.

I don’t know if I trust entertainment to teach anyone anything.

I never saw ‘Home Alone.’

There is a real Harold Lee.

I’ve never even seen a Cheech and Chong movie.

I would love to do Shakespeare, either onstage or on film.

The biggest boss has the clearest desk.

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.

The show definitely has a romantic construct, and that’s a genre that I’ve never had access to, in a significant way. This interesting for me to see, as an Asian guy, just standing back. I just wanted to break my way into a different genre. I was tickled that it was offered to me.

Whenever I’m on my way to a premiere or something, I always have a good laugh in the car… because it’s all so absurd – I’m one generation removed from starvation.

Sometimes you just get giggles leprosy and it can’t be helped. I find that there’s a direct correlation between fatigue and breaking.

I’ve been called a funny person for a long time. I don’t know that I know anything about comedic acting.

I don’t like when an Asian-American actor says, ‘I’m entering this business to change Hollywood.’ It feels like the wrong reason – I would prefer they entered the business for artistic reasons, because they need to do it.

For me, the most interesting thing is longevity and sustaining a career, because that’s what’s truly difficult.

Part of my mission as an actor has been to define what an American is.

There’s only so much I can do to effect change – and really, the thing that I can do that’s most effective is to work and to do good work. That, I feel, is speaking out in its own way.

For a while, I was feeling like I was always playing characters that weren’t specifically Korean or specifically Asian, even – that they were characters who were originally written white, and then they would cast me. And I used to consider that a badge of honor because that meant I had avoided stereotypes.

That’s what it is: a ‘Harold & Kumar’ movie is a romance between two best friends.

‘Sesame Street’ early on and then ‘Little House on the Prairie’ was a big deal in our house. I always identified with ‘Little House’ because they were wanderers, and there was something about being an immigrant.

I’m trying to think of – knock on wood – how young people would feel today if our president and our leaders were shot at. But… our young people are being killed at an astonishing rate, and times seem dark.

I don’t feel comfortable as an insider.

You don’t really see Asian men together very often. It’s very rare in life.

I’ve found it to be true that sometimes a stranger can give you advice that stays with you, utter truths the closest people in your life have trouble saying.

I accept what people say. I don’t have time to dissect it.

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.

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.

You know, I always root for the older athlete. I root for the second album. I root for solo careers after the rock star breaks the band apart.

You’re trying to grow up, and you don’t want to be like your parents, and that gets mixed up with being Korean… They brought their values from Korea, and I accepted them because I didn’t know anything more. But as I grow older, I feel more Korean every year; it’s very strange.

I try to take roles that don’t fall within the parameters of any Asian stereotype.

I write, and I sing, and I play a little guitar. I mean, it’s tiny. Ba-dump-bum!

I just didn’t see anyone on TV who looked like me, and then I saw George Takei being cool and piloting the spaceship on television.

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 need my comedy to offend. That’s my personal views.

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’ve thought for years, sometimes against my will, about what kind of son I’m supposed to be, what’s expected. Being Korean, that’s a particularly charged question. Is your duty to your culture or to your parent? Is your life your own, or the second half of your parents’ life? Who owns your life?

I’ve played roles that aren’t expected of an Asian.

Typically, actors overplay jargon or toss it away in an extravagant display of casualness. Real people hit the important parts hard.

There was a while where every role I was getting offered was extremely noble – like the judge or the kindly nurse.

It’s hard in America as a writer of color, an actor of color, not to get caught up in race and culture. But you’re also supposed to be able to write characters and scenes in a way where it’s just a matter of fact, a component.

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.

When I saw ‘My Fair Lady,’ I was surprised at how mean and misogynistic Henry was. Maybe that’s why it’s dropping out of public consciousness.

Ninety per cent of being a parent is just being present and available.

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.

Asians narratively in shows are insignificant. They’re the cop or the waitress or whatever it is. You see them in the background.

Our species likes being social.

Whenever I meet a Korean, I ask about their immigration history.