Favorite Asian Actors
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Nora Lum, known professionally as Awkwafina, is an American actress and rapper. She has played supporting roles in the comedy films Ocean's 8 and Crazy Rich Asians (2018), and her leading role in the comedy-drama The Farewell (2019) earned her a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress nomination.
She has released two albums, Yellow Ranger (2014) and In Fina We Trust (2018). She has also ventured into comedy and hosting, making television appearances in Girl Code, Future Man, and Saturday Night Live.
Lum was born in New York City to painter and South Korean immigrant Tia, who died when she was four, and Chinese-American father Wally. She grew up in Forest Hills, Queens, raised by her father and his grandparents; she became especially close to her grandmother. One of her paternal great-grandfathers was a Chinese immigrant in the 1940s; he opened the Cantonese restaurant Lum's in Flushing, Queens that was one of that neighborhood's first Chinese restaurants.
Lum attended LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts where she played the trumpet and was trained in classical music and jazz. At age 16, she adopted the stage name Awkwafina, "definitely a person I repressed" and an alter ego to her "quiet and more passive" personality during her college years. Lum majored in journalism and women's studies at the University at Albany, State University of New York. From 2006 to 2008, Lum attended Beijing Language and Culture University in China, where she studied Mandarin.
Lum states that Charles Bukowski, Anaïs Nin, Joan Didion, Tom Waits, and Chet Baker were early influences. Prior to her career in entertainment, she was an intern at local New York publications Gotham Gazette and the Times Union newspaper in Albany, and was a publicity assistant for publishing house Rodale.- Actress
- Producer
Kara Wang is a Chinese American actress from Los Angeles. She speaks native Mandarin Chinese as well as the Hangzhou Chinese dialect. She also reads and writes both traditional and simplified Chinese. Kara started performing at the age of 6, actively involved in theatre and show choir throughout elementary, middle, and high school. At the age of 15, she signed her first agent.
Kara graduated with her BA in theatre from the University of California, Irvine. Upon graduation, she signed a global deal with a talent agency in Asia. Kara resided in Hong Kong and Beijing during the years of 2010-2015. During that time, she acted in over 20 Chinese film and television productions, including Caught in the Web by the renowned Chinese director Chen Kaige.
In 2015, Kara relocated back to Los Angeles. She can be seen recurring on Freeform's Good Trouble and Amazon's Goliath. She will next be seen on the big screen in the highly anticipated sequel Top Gun: Maverick (2020).- Actor
- Producer
Leonardo Nam plays Felix Lutz on the critically acclaimed, award winning HBO series "Westworld". Nam is a scene-stealer as Felix, sharing nearly all his scenes with Golden Globe nominated actress Thandie Newton. "Westworld" premiered season one in October 2016 and has been nominated & won a handful of accolades including: 2017 Golden Globe Awards: Best Television Series - Drama (nominated), 2017 SAG Awards: Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series (nominated), 2016 Critics Choice Television Awards: Most Exciting New Series (won) and Best Drama Series (nominated), to name a few.
Born in Argentina to Korean immigrant parents and raised in Sydney, Australia, Nam attended Sydney Technical High School and studied architecture at the University of New South Wales, before deciding to move to New York City at the age of 19 to pursue his dream of becoming an actor. Whilst in New York, he studied drama at the critically acclaimed HB Studio and also worked with the New York Public Theater/Shakespeare in the Park company and Sigourney Weaver and Jim Simpson's The Bat Theater Company. His breakout role came in the Paramount Studios comedy "The Perfect Score"; starring Scarlett Johansson, Chris Evans and Erika Christensen. Since then he has gone on to star in a string of movies, namely "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" 1 & 2, "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift", "Vantage Point", "He's Just Not That Into You", "One for the Money" and the Sam Raimi produced comedy "Murder Of A Cat." On the television front Nam has recurred on the Amazon series "Betas," and has appeared on "Royal Pains," "Bones," "Franklin & Bash," and "Stalker".- Actress
- Soundtrack
Ming-Na ("enlightenment") was born on the island of Macau, forty miles from Hong Kong. Her mother, Lin Chan Wen, divorced her father when Ming-Na was only a toddler. She has an older brother named Jonathan. After the divorce, they moved to Hong Kong where her mother became a nurse. There her mother met Soo Lim Yee, a U.S. businessman. They soon married, and at four years, Ming-Na moved with her family to Queens, New York. Five years later, they transferred to Yee's hometown of Pittsburgh where his family runs the Chinatown Inn restaurant. Jonathan and half-brother, Leong, now manage this restaurant. Struggling to fit in at school, she changed her name to Maggie & Doris. She found a love for acting while appearing in a third grade Easter play, where she played a klutzy bunny. Her mother was not excited about her desire to pursue acting, She preferred that she go into medicine. Nonetheless, Ming-Na graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a degree in theatre. She got her first acting job in 1988 on the soap As the World Turns (1956). Her big break came when she was cast in The Joy Luck Club (1993). When she needed a ride to the premiere of the film, her acting instructor sent one of his students, Eric Michael Zee. The two started dating in 1994 after Ming-Na moved permanently to Los Angeles and married in 1995, dropping her last name, Wen, at that time. She says she is now like Ann-Margret. Zee is a screenwriter and, with Ming-Na, manages At Last, a boy band.- Actor
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- Producer
Benedict Wong is a British actor. He is known for his roles as Kublai Khan in Netflix's Marco Polo (2014-2016), Bruce Ng in The Martian (2015), and Wong in the Marvel Cinematic Universe since Doctor Strange (2016). Wong was born on 3 July 1971 in Eccles, Greater Manchester, the son of Hong Kong immigrant parents who had traveled through Ireland before settling in England. He was brought up in Eccles, and attended Salford City College (then called De La Salle Sixth Form College) in the surrounding area of Salford. He then took a two-year performing arts course at Salford City College.- Actress
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- Stunts
Arden Cho was born on 16 August 1985 in Amarillo, Texas, USA. She is an actress and producer, known for Teen Wolf (2011), Chicago Med (2015) and The Honor List (2018).- Actor
- Music Department
- Producer
Tony Leung Chiu Wai was born in Hong Kong on 27 June 1962. He and his younger sister were raised by their mother after his father left them. In 1982, after passing the training courses of TVB, Tony became a TV actor and became famous for his comedy style in such TV shows as Tales of a Eunuch (1983) or The Proud Twins (1979). However, he didn't limit himself to television and began showing his versatility in films like My Heart Is That Eternal Rose (1989) and A City of Sadness (1989). After he starred in several movies directed by 'Kar wai Wong'; such as Chungking Express (1994) and Happy Together (1997), he gained more respect as an actor and finally received the Best Actor Award at the Cannes International Film Festival for his outstanding performance in In the Mood for Love (2000). In addition to his acting career, he is also known as a singer.- Actress
- Director
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Fala Chen was born in China and raised in Atlanta, GA, USA. A recipient of MFA in Drama from The Juilliard School, Fala's mother tongue is in Mandarin, but she is known to be multilingual, and can speak fluently in English, Cantonese, and Japanese as well. Some of her notable TV and film work include her lead roles in Heart of Greed (2007), Steps (2007), Moonlight Resonance (2008), Turning Point (2009), No Regrets (2010), Triumph in the Skies 2 (2013), Will Power (2013), Tales from the Dark 2 (2013), and Despicable Me 3 (Cantonese) (2017). Her latest film, The Treasure, is pending release and was directed by Gordon Chan and Ronald Tsang. Her debut on the theatre stage came in summer 2016 with Skylight - the premiere of Chinese adaptation of the 1995 British play by David Hare that debuted in West End and Broadway. The play was scheduled to run for 24 shows at the Lyric Threatre HKAPA, and due to overwhelming responses, 11 additional shows were added, making that a total of 35 shows running across 1 July 2016 to 14 August 2016. Starring alongside Dayo Wong and Terrance Lau, Skylight was sold out within a few hours, and it received raving positive reviews including praises for Fala's performance as a theatre actor. Fala is the spokesperson for Olay in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. She is also the Ambassador for Hong Kong Cancer Fund's Pink Revolution Campaign, promoting awareness on breast cancer.- Meng'er Zhang was born on 22 April 1987 in Nanjing, Jiangsu, China. She is an actress, known for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021), The Witcher (2019) and Untitled Shang-Chi Sequel. She has been married to Yung Lee since 10 May 2021.
- Actor
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Simu is a Chinese-Canadian actor who won a Game Changer Award and People's Choice Award for his role as Shang-Chi in the Marvel movie Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021). Before his leading role in a Marvel movie, he played Jung Kim on the CBC sitcom Kim's Convenience (2016). He is also a writer and producer.
Immigrating from China at the age of 5, Simu was raised in Mississauga, Ontario. After graduating from the Richard Ivey School of Business and working at a top accounting firm for nearly a year, Liu was laid off. Deciding to pursue work in film and television instead, he quickly landed roles on series such as Heroes Reborn (2015), Nikita (2010), Warehouse 13 (2009) and Air Crash Investigation (2003).
He has since starred on Blood and Water (2015) and Taken (2017), and guest starred on shows such as The Expanse (2015), Bad Blood (2017), and Fresh Off the Boat (2015).
Liu has written and produced for television as well as in film. His short film Meeting Mommy was selected as a semi-finalist for the NBC Universal Shorts Festival. He was also a writer on the second season of Blood and Water, contributing as a story editor for the season and as the main writer for one episode.
Simu trains extensively in martial arts and stunt work in addition to television and theatrical performance.