Stuck in Asia, Dreaming of Hollywood
Getting roughed up in China is just part of the ride for many young Asian-American actors, who have been finding it easier to get started abroad than at home. But while Ms. Q — who grew up in Mililani, Hawaii, and moved to Tokyo in her teens to model — managed to leverage foreign stardom into a shot at a Hollywood career, few others have done so.
Another who has is Yunjin Kim of ABC’s “Lost,” who studied drama at Boston University and the London Academy of Performing Arts before becoming a film star in Korea.
Yet scores of other Asian-American actors are still waiting for their big break back home. Among them are Daniel Henney, a Korean-American who grew up in Carson City, Mich., and became a star in Korea playing a kindly radiologist in the hit television series “My Lovely Sam-Soon”; Daniel Wu, a native of Orinda, Calif., who won the Golden Horse award in Taiwan as best supporting actor in 2004; and Allan Wu, a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, who has become a television star in Singapore.
For Asian-Americans, who are seldom greeted with open arms in Hollywood, the trans-Pacific route to big-screen success is an old one.
