James Hong

James Hong (born February 22, 1929, Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.) is an American actor and director who is one of the most prolific character actors in Hollywood history, known for his many iconic film and television roles. Throughout a career that has spanned seven decades, Hong has appeared in more than 600 films and TV shows, including Blade Runner (1982), Big Trouble in Little China (1986), and Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) and episodes of Seinfeld (1989–98) and Hawaii Five-O (1968–80). A gifted voice-over artist, he has lent his distinctive voice to characters in animated films such as Mulan (1998), Turning Red (2022), Wendell & Wild (2022), and the Kung Fu Panda series (2008, 2011, and 2016).

Early life and education

Hong was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Frank Wu Hong and Lee Shui Fa, who were originally from Hong Kong. The family lived in Hong Kong from the time James Hong was 5 years old until he was 10 and then returned to the United States. His father managed the family business, an herb shop in the Chinatown area of downtown Minneapolis, and his mother looked after him and his six siblings. Hong took an interest in acting after watching Peking opera performers rehearse at his father’s shop, and he began performing in junior high- and high-school plays. He faced discrimination from his earliest acting days, often being passed over in favor of white students for major roles. In a 2020 interview with CNN, Hong recalled that his parents did not consider acting to be a viable career choice:

Chinese parents want you to…[pursue] professional jobs rather than be an actor. Being an actor is like the last rung in the ladder of professions. They don’t even call it a profession because it’s shameful to demonstrate your feelings in front of an audience. You were taught to be kind of quiet and to keep to yourself.

He graduated from Minneapolis Central High School in 1947 and went on to study civil engineering at the University of Minnesota, where he joined the Minnesota Army National Guard. His studies were interrupted during the Korean War when his National Guard unit was activated and sent to train with the United States Army at Camp Rucker (now Fort Novosel) in Dale county, Alabama. During his time in the army, Hong remained at Camp Rucker and organized shows and performances for Special Services, the entertainment branch of the U.S. military. In 1953, after the war ended, he moved to Los Angeles and resumed studying civil engineering at the University of Southern California, graduating in 1954.

Career

Hong’s big break came in 1954 when he delighted the audience of Groucho Marx’s game show You Bet Your Life with impressions of actors James Cagney, Jimmy Stewart, Peter Lorre, and Marx himself. Hong’s first film role came that same year with an uncredited part in the war drama Dragonfly Squadron. He dealt with racism and typecasting throughout much of his career, especially in the earlier years. In 1957 he began appearing in the crime drama TV series The New Adventures of Charlie Chan (1957–58) as Barry Chan, the titular character’s son. The role of Charlie Chan was played by a white actor, J. Carrol Naish, who taped his eyelids in a crude imitation of a Chinese man. As Hong later recalled, Naish, who was openly prejudiced toward him on the set, had Hong fired from the show in 1958.

An outspoken advocate for Asian actors, Hong noted in a 2023 interview with The Guardian that among his hundreds of roles, “I can count on my two hands the roles that I got that were non-cliched. I played a doctor in a couple of series and pictures, and a scientist in the movie Colossus: The Forbin Project.” He took matters into his own hands in 1965, cofounding the East West Players, a theater troupe that gives actors of Asian descent a chance to play roles they are often denied and a platform to showcase their own stories.

Hong played several bit parts in movies and TV shows set in Asian enclaves, such as the musical Flower Drum Song (1961), the war film The Sand Pebbles (1966), and the police procedural TV series Hawaii Five-O. Such roles constituted a majority of the work available to actors of Asian descent at the time. His career progressed as more roles became open to Asian actors, and he earned a reputation for his wide acting range. He appeared as a butler alongside Jack Nicholson in director Roman Polanski’s neo-noir mystery Chinatown (1974) and its sequel The Two Jakes (1990). He portrayed a designer of synthetic humanoid eyes in the dystopian science-fiction film Blade Runner (1982). One of his most memorable roles was his turn as the immortal sorcerer David Lo Pan in director John Carpenter’s cult classic action-comedy Big Trouble in Little China (1986). In a 2022 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Hong described how he added a touch of empathy and humanity to his portrayal of the villainous sorcerer:

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I don’t know about your dreams, but in my dreams, I’m lost—I’m still looking for something. I put that feeling into David Lo Pan. Seeking. Looking. I think you could see in the old man’s eyes that he was lonely. He was looking for something he couldn’t find in the universe, so he came down to Earth.

Hong appeared in the iconic Seinfeld episode “The Chinese Restaurant” (1991), as Bruce, a restaurant host who leads the main characters through a seemingly endless wait for a table. He played another comedic role in Wayne’s World 2 (1993), as an overprotective father who challenges his daughter’s boyfriend to a martial arts battle. In 1998 Hong lent his voice to Chi-Fu, adviser to the emperor of China, in Disney’s animated musical Mulan, and from 2002 to 2004 he voiced the evil wizard Dalong Wong in the animated TV series Jackie Chan Adventures. In 2007 he portrayed table tennis maven Master Wong in the sports comedy film Balls of Fury. In the Kung Fu Panda films (2008, 2011, and 2016), Hong voiced the character of Mr. Ping, the main character’s adoptive father. In 2022 he played the role of Gong Gong, the father of protagonist Evelyn Wang (played by Michelle Yeoh) in the Academy Award-winning multiverse romp Everything Everywhere All at Once. In addition to his acting work, Hong has directed a handful of films, including the 1989 horror film The Vineyard, which he also starred in.

He continues to act in his ninth decade of life. In 2022 after a successful funding campaign led by East West member Daniel Dae Kim, Hong became the oldest actor to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In a 2023 interview with CBS Minnesota, Hong showed no signs of slowing down: “I’m not going to stop working. My wife wants me to go to a retirement home soon, but I don’t think I’m fit for that. I wouldn’t know what to do.”