‘For every little boy and girl who look like me watching tonight, this is a beacon of hope and possibilities.’
It has been a long road to Asian representation in the western film industry. As Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan made history, we also understood their blood and tears during the journey. And their stories, are common among a lot of actors of Asian descent working (or trying to work) tirelessly in the west.
I wanted to be an actor since I was a kid.
Watching TV and movie on screens, I was fascinated. I remembered at a young age, I will at times imitate the looks and expressions of actors on screen, especially in the last frozen shot of each episode as the credits ran.
When I grew older and started learning to read and write, I was shocked to find out that there were newspapers dedicated to these fake people in the TV world.
That changed when I shockingly found out someone’s parent and family were the fake people on TV. That’s when I learnt of this profession – actor.
And I told my friend that’s what I wanted to be when I grew up.
But as we all know, dreams are dreams for a kid, who was not socially advantageous and needing a ‘real’ job to survive.
Although I was hailed for my performances in some acting roles when I grew up, I missed out several occasions to get into acting or study acting professionally. It was just something my family wouldn’t allow. It was just not an option, especially when you can study and were good at it.
But that fire was never fully extinguished.
When I came back to Australia for university, the opportunity to study acting presented itself in a most conspicuous way – the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) located just opposite to the college I was staying in. As I was looking for something to do to deal with my boredom in my studies, I signed up for a weekend Shakespeare acting class, thinking, ‘I read and learnt about Shakespeare, but how do you act in Shakespeare?’
The course was just for four weeks, but that’s when I was told again by the teacher that acting is something I should consider pursuing because, ‘I brought a unique perspective to the art that’s not often found in other actors’
That reignited spark turned into a full-scale bush fire inside me and fast forward to now, I have completed Theatre School, wrote and staged my own play, championed for diversity casting in Australia for many years, while continuing to pursue that ‘unique perspective’.
I am still not a well-known A list or any list actor. I am still not working as an actor consistently. But what I knew was, when I am bringing something from a storyboard or pages of script to life, I felt alive, and there is happiness coursing through my veins.
Do I want to be seen more? Do I want to be considered as more successful? Certainly! But I always kept true to the advice of one of my mentors, the late Kevin Jackson, who told me – if it’s not about the art, don’t be an actor. I always tell people that, if one day I stopped acting, it is not because I couldn’t make it big in the industry, but because I lost the passion in this art form.
Being an actor initially being told that I am ‘Not Chinese enough, and not Australian enough’ in many occasions when I started up, I treasured each performance opportunity while trying to break the mode of what my look can yield me in terms of roles. That’s because I want to be seen differently, not just me as an actor, but me being transformed into someone else, so I can tell their stories in the most moving and convincing way.
Both Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan stumbled a lot and were told a lot of things before they snapped the golden man. Just like a lot of actors, their roles dried up after the chewing and spitting of the machine. One may argue that happened to a lot of people, just like Brendan Fraser, this year’s Best Actor in the Leading Role, but some maybe surprised how fast roles dried up for ethnic / minority actors. I was told once that having a recurring role 3 years after a small guest role in the same series will ‘confuse’ the audience, so the opportunity was given to someone else; but it was not an issue for an Anglo actor to do so within the same season of a different series.
The industry has moved forward with time over the years, at glacial pace maybe, but I do hope a boost in the interest of Asian actors in the west could lead to more actors like me being seen more, not just in ethnic roles, but in roles.
I can always dream. It may stay as a dream. But as Michelle Yeoh said, if we stopped dreaming, dreams would never become reality.
