Actors From The United States

"If we’re talking about purely historical content, I think having an understanding of one another definitely bridges certain gaps. I think this hate stems from fear, and if we can have that connection and historical factual sense of belonging and being here, I feel it would bridge certain gaps of hate and fear that we all live with today. At least we're trying to create progress in a larger way."

"I think I can say that I am more in touch with my Korean side because of my upbringing and strong Korean Mom. Also, for the past 10 years, I have been taking care of my Korean Grandmother more…so their Korean traits have influenced me in my life. However, that still doesn’t take anything away from my Japanese roots. I think both cultures have instilled in me the morals, values, customs and traditions I live by. I’m in touch with both sides…it’s not a sense of “meaning” but a sense of “being” that I am proud of."

"No joke, it’s completely split down the middle. Half the people think I’m Japanese and the other half thinks that I’m Korean. The Koreans would want me to be Korean and the Japanese would want me to be Japanese. When I was in Korea, people just assumed I was Korean and when I was in Japan they assumed I was Japanese. And sometimes for the non-Koreans (or non-Japanese), I would get Chinese or general Asian."

"I’ve been fortunate to work with a lot of different people and we are all buddies from going to events and film festivals as you get to meet a lot of the same people. It’s kind of one big niche group that all knows one another. I’m just very fortunate to be a part of this industry and be a part of the Asian-American film family. Hopefully in the future we can all progress together and set a standard for Asian-Americans as well as how the mainstream looks upon us."

"It's the transformation that drives me. I want to do it all and never want to be boxed into something as a particular type or style. I never want people to think they know me. I hope to build a repertoire that one can look at and say, from to role to role, 'Was that Brian Tee?'"

"For the most part, the roles Asians can get aren't necessarily well-rounded, and more often than not, they're stereotypes. But that's all we have. And then we see each other all the time at auditions, because we're all going for the same role. I've made a lot of friends that way."

"I still like the guys in the suit myself, I mean I was a guy in a suit I guess, but I think it still can be fun to do."

"If you can just convey it to someone in a genuine way, with a scenario or explain why it is what it is, that’s the most helpful thing. But you also have to give some kind of creative freedom to the people who are doing the voices and doing those roles – because if they got the job and they know the characters well they’re gonna do well. So a lot of that is just having a good cast and then facilitating it, let them be creative and then if something has to be tweaked, just be very helpful with how it needs to be tweaked."

"They posted my real name, the real names of my parents and pictures of them, their home address and telephone number, the name and picture and phone number of my brother, a picture of the cemetery where my grandfather recently passed away, not to mention saying that I have HIV."

"I have seen all manner of drugs on set, at parties, in cars, everywhere. If I had to guess, I would put marijuana use at 90 percent of all people involved in the industry (performers, directors, crew, agents, drivers, owners, office workers, etc.). I have been on a set where a girl has passed out DURING a sex scene with me (she was abusing oxycontin). Just recently a girl overdosed on GHB (a party drug that is a clear, odorless drug that doesn't mix well with alcohol) on set. I have seen a girl win a prestigious AVN Award, not show up to accept the award, and then fall into the throes of drug use that caused her to lose at least 50 pounds and drop off the face of the earth."

"I don’t have a dream role. Every role I get is my dream role. Whatever the role… I have to commit to every time."

"The thing is that there aren’t many stories told that are being shown to everybody from this, so any opportunity that I have to see a project that we could just release that to people that they could see a slice of life that they may not recognize or they may not know. It’s about family, it’s about being good people, it’s about culture, whether it’s music, theater, arts. And the opportunity to show that in a neighborhood and in a culture that I grew up in is very important to me."

"I went to an acting school while I was a cop still…The moment I was involved in that world, it electrified me and I realized that it was something that I wanted to do"

"He looked at me like I was thinking outside of the reality of where we were at…And I respected my father. He was a good man, he was a good father, so I kind of like, really just put it in the back of my head. I really didn't pursue it much."

"You know, the concept of even an Asian-American person and a man has morphed and changed even in the last decade by a lot. You know, there's moments where people were super psyched that an Asian man was in a relationship with a white woman. And that was, like, a big point of victory for a moment…"

"Let's not mess with your Americana that's kind of embedded into your body. The food that you've eaten, the choices that you've made, the way that you think - don't alter those things. Instead, just - let's work on the language so that you can be unequivocally Korean. But let's leave these mysterious Western encodings in your body alone. And I think that created its inherent kind of, like, dissonance with that character where you don't know who or what and where he's from."

"One was my movement, which I’m very conscious of in films, especially coming from martial arts. Think about how many times a character is seen just sitting or walking or standing, it’s a lot of time in film and it says so much about a character. So I’ve always been keen to pay attention to movement and that was one thing he said he noticed. Never have I heard a director talk like that about me. And also he said that the eyes were important because it really has to come through the make-up. So he was interested in those two aspects especially…"

"Nothing ever stops me. Certainly coming into Hollywood, I knew that there would be certain limitations. But I also couldn’t play a woman or I couldn’t play a white hero. To play Asian and to speak with accents because I speak Japanese, it never really bothered me. All I always look for in every piece is how can I use this piece to move to the next step? So the worst thing about playing Asian bad guys would be to not be remembered…"

"Hollywood was a detour, although my mother was an aristocrat from Tokyo who ran away to join the theatre, so acting is in my genes. I've played a lot of bad guys, including a torturing acupuncturist in my first B-movie, but one of my favourite roles was a surfing grandfather from Hawaii in the film Johnny Tsunami. My father's family are Hawaiian, so it was the closest to my own personality."

"When I did La Bamba and Stand and Deliver, I marched with Cesar Chavez and fasted with him. Whatever I have directed, I've flipped roles to be more inclusive of ethnic, female and LBGQ performers. This is a flag I've waved from the beginning. I got into the door and kept my foot in it so others could come in behind me."

"I have never felt that Hollywood is mine, and I've never felt like the King of Hollywood. I've always felt lucky to be included... to be invited to the party. I guess because I've never expected my career to be as successful as it has been – I'd still be acting for free in Dallas, Texas if La Bamba had never come along. This has always been my love and my passion – my work – and so to be doing it at the level I'm doing, I'm quite happy…"

"One thing I have to say about Japanese anime is that there’s a certain sort of tone there that bypasses the Asian part. And the characters really turn into something more Western. I’d like to see a true Japanese character. We don’t need to make the eyes look round, we don’t need the light in her hair. We can have dark hair and the eyes look like mine. They can be speaking English. We have Asian-Americans. And certainly there are plenty of people from Hawaii that are very Asian and totally local. It’s part of America…"

"These days I feel my otherness in every situation…If I go to Korea, there are reminders that I’m not fully Korean. I can speak it – and I look it there – but there are cultural and historical things that I don’t have because I wasn’t necessarily raised there. They really form the identity of being Korean and I’m missing parts of those…a man with no country…That’s the kind of place I’m operating from."

"My overall philosophy was to continue to do good work, to expand my range, and to show that range. I think Hollywood can certainly try to put you into boxes. My entire career has been somewhat of a reflection of my college theater experience, and that was, I did everything. Not only did I do Shakespeare and Molière, but I did Mamet and John Patrick Shanley; contemporary playwrights. I was writing in college, I was directing in college, and when I got to Hollywood, I tried to continue that. I think my first three roles in Hollywood are somewhat indicative of that. You’ve got 'La Bamba,' then 'Stand and Deliver,' then 'Young Guns.' All three films are very different, and all three characters are extremely different."

"Here’s what an Asian person looks like to a majority white audience…But if you go to Korea, the characters are just humans because they’re not thinking about it like that. That’s something that I was made aware of [with Burning], which was really wonderful for me to know. I didn’t have to represent all Asians. I could just represent myself."

"Once you wrap your brain around playing your age, it's a very, very positive thing…"

"Superman has got nothing on me because my kids gave me that perspective...They don’t know what they did for me. Maybe they’ll find out now and will read about it when they are big. They’ll understand what they did for me. If they gave up their piggy bank, then I have to give mine."

"...the most uncomfortable and saddest times of my life. I thought my emotions were evil because that’s what they told me. You’re not supposed to feel like this."

"I won’t stop singing in Spanish...It’s my mother tongue. [It’s] important to let people know more about Latin culture and exchange a little bit — it’s what I’ve been doing for seven years, since I released my first solo album."

"Being Ricky Martin back then and what I was feeling were not compatible...I was the sex symbol and I needed to dance and I needed to make girls crazy and I couldn't say that I was gay. It was a struggle."

"I find solace in my country’s music, all my life. It’s been a great inspiration to me. In ‘The Lost City,’ the protagonist of the movie is the music. I tried to weave the elements of the Cuban culture, and historical elements that happened at that time. [It’s] a very classical film in a way, the structure using a family as a microcosm of what is going on in the society, brothers against brothers politically, a father trying to keep his family together, impossible love: You can love her but you can’t be with her, which is the relationship of every exile in the world with his home country."

"I was born in Havana and my family left when I was five-and-a-half. I remember the transition and some memories of being in Havana. I tried to analyze this and I think all exiles who have to leave a country you love, develop a profound nostalgia for where you were born but can no longer be there – like an impossible love. You protect those memories and don’t take them for granted. It’s different for someone who grew up and still lives in the same city because they do take their memories for granted. For me, I’m very nostalgic – not only about my time in Havana, but my 30 years in Miami Beach. All those memories are pretty vivid and I guard and cherish them. I also use those recollections in my work."

"I ask myself those questions sometimes…But no, I think you're a slave to your own sensibility, and your own artistic desires and dreams, and I'm still motivated by them. I'm certainly not going to wait around for someone from Hollywood to call me. I can't control if anyone's thinking of me, or wants to put me in a movie, I can't control that. So I don't preoccupy myself with that world, because that world's an ever-changing animal, and there are new flavours of the month every month, and you might be one, one month, and then not the next. I'm blessed that I've been in that game in my life, but what I'm concerned with on a daily level is what I'm interested in."

"I'm American completely, and I think I appreciate America more than a lot of Americans do…In fact I know I do. Because America has offered me the freedoms that were taken away from me in Cuba, and so I have an enormous appreciation and respect and gratitude for that country, and I value what it stands for."

"His poetry and the plays are so fraught with the things that aggravated and influenced him and ultimately made his life successful. He took this form and infused it with an urban, Latin lifeblood that had never been used in poetry before. He was remarkable as a writer in terms of never really self-editing himself or censoring himself."

"Prison is a society within a society. It’s a reflection of life in the streets. The jargon may be different, but we think and feel the same as on the streets and we recreate it in prison."

"I happen to feel that [Piñero] was a romantic character and there was something about his love for land that was very wonderful, the way he held Puerto Rico, that elusive homeland in the foreground of his thoughts and writing. For all of us who are uprooted and thrown into this city, to keep a semblance of that is always so dignified. That would make it perhaps a bit nostalgic for me because people like that don’t seem to be around anymore."

"When I started writing, there were only two women writers that I knew: Lorraine Sutton and Margie Simmons. There were very few Latinas writing in English... So when I started, I was mainly surrounded by men-Pedro Pietri, Jesus Papoleto Melendez, Lucky Cienfuegos, Miguel Algarín, Miguel Piñero, Tato Laviera. Many of them had books already published. I was like a sponge, absorbing different things from these male contemporaries."

"Theater is the only thing that still belongs to the people"

"This season I've been on more of a plant-based diet, getting away from all the animals and all that. I had to get away from that. So my energy is up, my body feels amazing. Just understanding what the diet is like for me and what’s beneficial for me for having the highest energy out here and being able to sustain it at a very high level."

"It was not smooth at all, and it was because of me, not because of Jim. Jim should have ****in' fired me several times. Jim was extraordinarily patient. I was a young guy who wanted to make his mark in the world, and if I was the co-director, by God why wasn't I attending more meetings and why didn't I get more say in things? I had a problem of self-esteem and it came through that way. It was difficult for Jim, not for me. It was frustrating for me, but that was an unhealthy frustration. It worked because Jim was patient."

"What I don't like is describing Jim as that he was this wonderful, warm, sweet man because, yes he was a wonderful, warm, sweet man – but he was also the strongest man I ever met in character. He was very tough. He worked like a sonofabitch. He could get cranky and he got snarky at times. He would rarely get angry. I've seen him angry only about three times in my life. He was a very complex guy, but he was that noble spirit."

"It seems Mr. Mark Saltzman was asked if Bert & Ernie are gay. It’s fine that he feels they are. They’re not, of course. But why that question? Does it really matter? Why the need to define people as only gay? There’s much more to a human being than just straightness or gayness."

"Jim didn't have a script – he didn't work that normal way. He wanted to have a laboratory of textures and designs and ideas and rehearsals. He had a story – but he wanted the script to work in conjunction with the laboratory of creating the characters."

"I helped him direct the movie, but he had the vision. It was because of Jim not accepting the impossible and as a result he would work harder than anybody I’ve ever known because he was the one who led the way by working harder. None of us could say no because he always worked harder than us. When you say special, I think that really is the memory that I have, the incredible upward hill journey that we had to do every single day. It was very tough."

"I’m not involved in the slightest. I say “godspeed.” I am not involved. Nobody’s mentioned it in any way to me whatsoever. I’ll be very curious to see it."

"This is Jim – he said, "Would you direct Dark Crystal with me?" and I said, "Why? I don't know how to direct. You could do it yourself. Why would you want me to direct with you?" He said, "Because it would be better." And that's all that mattered. He didn't care about the credit. He knew that he had some weaknesses and he felt that I had some strengths, and so we worked together that way."

"What Jim wanted to do, and it was totally his vision, was to get back to the darkness of the original Grimm’s fairy tales. He thought it was fine to scare children. He didn’t think it was healthy for children to always feel safe."

"In the past eight years, failed policies have caused our country to deteriorate. Our rights have been trampled, and our security threatened. We are weaker by almost every measure. We are on the wrong path. That is clear even to someone who was not even born here. I came to the United States from Rome, Italy in 1985. I followed all the rules, and finally became a naturalized citizen in 1996. Others who want to come to the U.S. to live and work should follow the same rules. We are a nation of laws for a reason. There should be no shortcuts for those who don’t want to pay or wait"

"I think this country allows you freedom of speech. Anybody should be allowed to say whatever they want. When you’re in my business, you can’t talk about [conservative] politics. You just can’t. You’re attacked viciously in a way that I’ve never been attacked before."