Top 33 Hong Chau Quotes

I fell into acting because I was really shy, and so at night after work, I took public speaking and improv classes, and I started going to auditions sort of as a dare. That was my version of ‘Fear Factor.’

My parents speak with an accent. A lot of people that I know speak with an accent. I have friends who speak with an accent. Accents in a vacuum aren’t a problem; it’s how you portray those characters and how well they’re served in a script.

I grew out of the habit of thinking or worrying about being seen as the typical Asian. I don’t even know what that means anymore. I’m not really concerned with it.

I don’t have any special skills or any hidden talents. I don’t.

Growing up the way I did, being an actor in Hollywood was definitely never a plausible career choice at all.

My parents are Vietnamese refugees; they left Vietnam after the war. They were part of the boat people, and they ended up in a refugee camp in Thailand after being on the water for three days, and I was born at that refugee camp in Thailand.

I walk on eggshells, and I care too much about what people think, and I’m afraid to ask for things.

I love Chicago for several reasons, but one of the best is that I was so intrigued that you have wild rabbits running around in the city. I never had seen bunnies in such a large urban environment before.

My first job out of college was at PBS as an administrative assistant. I thought I would be on the production side of things.

People who I’ve encountered who have had more given to them, they tend to be more disappointed and unable to carry on when something doesn’t go their way, and that’s not my parents.

Giving people the opportunity to sit in a dark theater together and have emotions in public, whether they’re laughing or crying – that’s what makes me happy.

Asian-Americans, we’re not a monolithic group. There might be some Asians who are second-generation, third-generation, who may not speak the language that their parents or their grandparents spoke.

For me, I do my best work when I feel completely relaxed and not being judged.

When you see something that needs to be done, you do it.

I don’t like being watched, and I don’t like being told what to do, so acting is a very poor professional choice.

I think that a lot of actors of color have said that it’s a wonderful thing to play a role that doesn’t have a race and that is kind of open to any sort of interpretation. I completely understand that, but at the same time, I just want Asian characters that are well-written.

I like to be very simple in my lifestyle. My only extravagance is… I buy lots of toys and meats for my dog.

I appreciate people who sway to the beat of their own tambourine, like Iris Apfel and Helena Bonham Carter.

I love public transportation! Who wants to sit in a car and be angry at other drivers for eight hours? I’d rather sit on a bus or train and read a book.

With ‘Downsizing,’ a lot of the discussion hasn’t been about the film itself, but about cultural and political conversations happening outside of it. It’s being digested in the context of the time.

I did a regional car commercial and an internet potato chip commercial. I was seriously thinking I needed to quit and get a serious job where I can feed myself and it doesn’t kill my soul.

That’s what I want to continue to do: really odd films, with interesting filmmakers.

In life, we are all more than one thing, but for some reason in movies, you’re either this or that. It reduces the complexity of a human being in so many ways.

In Hollywood, there’s not a ton of roles for Asian people. So a lot of it is waiting and waiting and waiting.

The first time I went to Chicago was on a family road trip. We had our dog with us, and when we hit Chicago, I couldn’t believe how many people kept coming up to us, telling us how handsome our dog was! He’s a Rottweiler-Australian Shepherd mix, and he is a good-looking dog, but obviously Chicago is very dog-friendly.

I love films that aren’t just speaking to certain moments in the culture but are something that people can revisit.

I really want to work on characters that have a lot of complexity and you don’t always get that in comic book movies because they’re not character explorations. I have nothing against movies like that, but I do see them as kind of like a cheeseburger.

I don’t want anyone to think I took this role in ‘Downsizing’ because it was the only role available to me. I’m not a passive participant in it.

I think one in five Americans has a disability of some sort. That’s 20% of the population, and yet we rarely ever see people with disabilities on-screen, and their stories and their resilience and their zest for life and their humor and their humanity.

Americans have a wonderful way of just butchering everyone’s names.

I never like to sit and discuss my character, the other character, our relationship, or anything like that. I feel like if I did my job and I trust that the other person has done theirs, you just go on set, play around with it, chew the scene for a little bit; then we roll, and that’s it.

If anyone has to leave their homeland by boat, they all have difficult stories. But my parents had a difficult journey, and their story always seems like a movie to me.

I don’t want to put on any gimmicky layers just to give the character more definition. I just want to play good characters. It doesn’t matter to me if it’s ‘open ethnicity’ or ‘specifically Asian.’