James Hong looks back at his iconic roles, from Big Trouble in Little China to EEAAO
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At 94, James Hong is ready for his next act.
The legendary actor arrived in Hollywood in the early 1950s from his native Minneapolis, ready to embark on what would become a storied seven-decade career. Though substantial roles for Asian actors were few and far between, Hong — who recently won his first SAG Award for Everything Everywhere All at Once — never wavered from his dreams, driven by what he calls an "inner desire to perform."
"My parents didn't want me to be performing my emotions in front of an audience," Hong tells EW, "but there was that little something that made me want to be an actor." Though Hong took acting classes early in his career, "I got educated by just performing," he said. "All those early years when I was averaging 10 movies or TV shows a year, I just kept going."
Everett Collection James Hong
With more than 600 credits to his name, Hong — also a co-founder of East West Players, an organization that raises Asian American visibility in the arts — has no plans of slowing down. "There's not that many roles for 90-year-old men," he says, but EEAAO "opened up a whole new ball game for me."
Below, Hong looks back at some of his most memorable roles.
<i>Big Trouble in Little China</i> (1986)
Hong's ancient sorcerer David Lo Pan kidnaps a woman with green eyes to wed in order to be freed from a centuries-old curse that keeps him as a fleshless spirit in John Carpenter's cult classic. Truck driver Jack Burton (Kurt Russell) and pal Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) are on the rescue, soon finding themselves locked in a supernatural battle in the underbelly of San Francisco's Chinatown against the antagonistic Lo Pan — but Hong maintains his cunning sorcerer wasn't so evil at all. "I just wanted a girl to love," he says. "I just wanted to have a girl with green eyes. There's nothing wrong with that."
Adds Hong: "John Carpenter had this feeling of wanting to make the Chinese fables come together with the American expression, and he succeeded because the popularity of [the movie] is extraordinary."
<i>Blade Runner</i> (1982)
As a Tyrell Corporation employee, Hong's domineering scientist Hannibal Chew designs replicant eyeballs in Ridley Scott's sci-fi action film that follows Harrison Ford as a cop and hunter of replicants — synthetic humans engineered to work at space colonies — who falls in love with a replicant girl (Sean Young). "Ridley Scott created a monumental set that established the pace of the things to come," Hong remembers of the cult classic. "So many directors and producers have copied his style." To be in such an "iconic" movie, Hong says, "was a big thrill to me."
<i>Chinatown</i> (1974)
Jack Nicholson's private eye Jake Gittes finds himself caught in a web of murder and deceit after he's hired by Faye Dunaway's Evelyn Mulwray for what he assumes to be a routine infidelity case in Roman Polanski's neo-noir, which features Hong as Evelyn's no-name but memorable butler. Between complicated twists that involve incest and corruption ("My sister!" "My daughter!"), "I was sure Faye Dunaway would get the Oscar for that year, but she didn't," Hong says of his costar. "To me, she should have, because her performance was very deep and she dug into her soul to create that character."
(Dunaway lost Best Actress to Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore star Ellen Burstyn.)
<i>Mulan</i> (1998)
Hong's pompous and elitist Chi-Fu, the Emperor of China's trusted and loyal advisor, is appalled when he discovers that Mulan (voiced by Ming-Na Wen) has been impersonating as a man to take the place of her ailing father after he's drafted into the Chinese military in the Disney animated film. Hong is proud that Mulan was "one of the first successful expressions in animation of a Chinese story," adding, "It was very gratifying to see that they used the voices of Asian American actors."
It also marks a reunion between Hong and Eddie Murphy, who both starred in 1986's adventure comedy The Golden Child. "I knew he was able to ad lib," Hong says. "He has that sense of improvisation, which made it very interesting."
<i>Seinfeld</i> — "The Chinese Restaurant" episode (1991)
In a fan favorite season 2 episode of Jerry Seinfeld's acclaimed sitcom, Hong portrays Bruce, the maître d' of a Chinese restaurant where pals Jerry (Seinfeld), Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), and George (Jason Alexander) hope to grab a quick bite at ahead of a movie — if only they can get seated at a table. As Bruce, who is unfazed by the trio's bribes and tomfoolery throughout the episode, Hong "just dug into my own comedic sense and made sense out of nonsense," he says. "They tell me it is one of the five best Seinfelds in the files. And how can I not be happy to be in one of the top five Seinfeld episodes?"
<i>Wayne's World 2</i> (1993)
Hong squares off against Mike Myers in a martial arts fight-off in the sequel to Wayne's World, centered on Myers' metalhead Wayne Campbell and his pursuit to put on a rock concert. In the sequence, Wayne must prove to Hong's martial artist Jeff Wong that he's worthy of his daughter (Tia Carrere) and the two go head-to-head, sword in tow and all — but the duo are far from opponents off screen. "I am an admirer and friend of Mike Myers," Hong says of his former costar. "He's such a sweet guy, so easy to get along with. I will treasure that friendship and his comradery."
<i>Kung Fu Panda</i> franchise (2008-present)
As Mr. Ping, a noodle chef and adoptive father of Jack Black's central panda Po, Hong's animated goose is supportive of his son's dreams to become a kung fu master despite his own desires for Po to take over his noodle shop. Broth runs through Mr. Ping's veins — much like animation work runs through Hong's, who earned a Daytime Emmy nom for franchise series Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness. "I love going to work in that beautiful studio and doing the voices," he says.
"In all my voiceover work, I tend to give the director three or four readings of the same line, all in different moods, so they have to decide which voice would fit the picture the best," Hong adds. "And the director for the TV series, Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight, tells me that I'm the only actor that can give him three readings and they're all perfect, so that's my forte."
<i>Balls of Fury</i> (2007)
Hong's ping pong sensei Wong assists former ping pong prodigy Randy Daytona (Dan Fogler) when the latter is recruited to infiltrate an underground death tournament hosted by the man responsible for his father's death (Christopher Walken) in the sports comedy, which was largely panned by critics and grossed a meek $41.7 million worldwide.
"We did our best," Hong says, but agrees with critic reviews that say it may have lost its way halfway into the film with the big face-off. "I thought it was a pretty decent movie, especially the first portion, before we got to the fight, the court. Once we got to the court, we lost that personal feeling between the kung fu master and student and the love and trials and tribulation between the two. That was gone. The plot didn't marry itself into a big climax. It just kind of drizzled out with the fighting."
<i>Everything Everywhere All at Once</i> (2022)
As Gong Gong, Hong plays the father to Michelle Yeoh's central character Evelyn, the owner of a failing laundromat called upon to save the multiverse, in the 2022 sci-fi dramedy (and Best Picture Oscars winner) from director duo Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. For the film, which earned Hong a SAG Award, the actor evoked memories from his childhood — particularly, of the Chinese herb store his father owned in Minneapolis — to bring his character to the screen.
"On weekends, the old men from the suburbs came in to gather and play Mahjong and so forth," Hong recalls. "We lived right above [the store] and there was that constant bombardment of the Chinese voices. They also brought in Chinese opera to sing in that store. So it came through the floors and embedded into my memory. Most of those old Chinese men were probably grandfathers. I was glad I was able to use that push in my memory in expressing Gong Gong."
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