Top 66 John Cho Quotes

The biggest boss has the clearest desk.

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

To be able to communicate with people on the other side of the globe is interesting, in an instant.

Just because it’s in a movie doesn’t mean it’s real.

With acting, you are a small part of the creative process, and sometimes it is hard to feel like you are making an impact.

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 have an affinity for comedy because I like to watch them. It’s an honor to make comedies because I love being able to pop something into the DVD player and laugh. I love doing it.

‘Star Trek’ seems to be an appeal to our better nature, the side of ourselves that works toward peace and cooperation and understanding and knowledge and yearns to seek out knowledge rather than the side that wants to divide and control one another.

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

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

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’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 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.

Good things will come from self-expression.

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

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 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 think my parents were surprisingly cool with me entering the arts. Although, I think they thought it was going to be a phase, and they didn’t expect me to actually stick with it, and rightfully so. They were concerned whether I could afford groceries, being an actor.

I never saw ‘Home Alone.’

‘Lost’ was a phenomenon, like Elvis.

The worst thing for a kid is to move around and switch schools, but as an actor, you go from job to job, meeting strangers and becoming very close right away. I’ve become adept at that.

What was exciting to me in talking to Kogonada was I was just very convinced that he was a very real and pure artist. He was so uninterested in the commercial game.

People expect me to be funnier.

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.

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.

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

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.

The key to doing ‘Harold and Kumar’ movies is you make it earnest. Primarily what we do is make Harold and Kumar’s relationship and friendship believable, and we don’t actually work on being that funny.

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.

I got sort of sick of seeing Asians being the blank, bland real estate agent or something. I didn’t care. It didn’t mean anything to me.

There is a real Harold Lee.

I am a little curmudgeonly about new media.

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.

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

Everyone posts everything in real time as it happens.

I’ve found that one’s language abilities, especially for Korean kids like me, get frozen at the age you immigrated. So I’ve always associated Korea with being a child and being infantilized through my inability to speak.

What’s impressed me about ‘Star Trek’ fans is how many generations they span and how many nations they represent. They are all over the place.

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

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.

I think about John Lennon all the time. What would John Lennon do? What would John Lennon say if he got this part? How would he act? I don’t know, but he’s my moral barometer.

I’m not a good improv-er, which is what a lot of comedic actors are really good at. I have failed miserably when I’ve been asked to improvise.

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

One of the things I like about comedy in general is that it affords Asian Americans the opportunity to not be noble.

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.

I had a stereotype in my mind of what a ‘Star Trek’ fans is, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.

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.

Movies may be as close to a document of our national culture as there is; they’re supposed to represent what we believe ourselves to be. So when you don’t see yourself at all – or see yourself erased – that hurts.

I don’t feel comfortable as an insider.

The thing about kissing men – how do people stand it? The stubble is maddening.

As an immigrant, I learned by watching other people.

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.

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.

I campaigned for Obama, and that was such a big component of getting the vote out, was social media.

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

I feel like there’s this need that the Asian-American community has to feel like people. It’s something that Asians in Asia do not understand about us.

I get called Harold the most. I think maybe ‘Harold & Kumar’ fans don’t know my name, and ‘Star Trek’ fans do know my name… Harold fans are vocal!

I grew up speaking Korean, but my dad spoke English very well. I learned a lot of how to speak English by watching television.

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

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

It’d be nice if Asian actors could be perceived as profitable, which is the bottom line. We’re perceived as not mattering much fiscally.

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

I’d like to be in a Western.

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

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

When you get something off the ground, it’s fantastic, and you feel really close to that group of people.