Today parakkum posted about racial diversity in entertainment, and mentioned that I knew right off the bat who he was talking about in 16 Blocks, because there's really only two choices when casting a Chinese restauranteur in Hollywood:
Kim Chan (below), who is typically the proprietor of a hole in a wall Chinese restaurant (or in the picture's case, the owner of a futuristic flying Chinese restaurant junk)
Or James Hong (below) who is usually in a black suit typically owns a Chinese restaurant that is either being extorted for money or the one doing the extorting.
The general rule casting directors seem to follow for these two actors is if you need a friendly old Chinese restaurant owner who helps the characters, you hire Kim Chan. Nothing bad usually happens to Kim Chan's character, although it's not uncommon for him to be beaten up and left for dead. If you need an old Chinese guy to be either the victim or the villain on TV or in a movie, you hire James Hong. James usually doesn't get beaten up or killed, and quite often he's the man the heroes need to stop. Because of his stiff demeanor, he's often cast as an ambassador/diplomat, a triad boss, or a businessman (usually of ill repute). James as been in numerous televison shows as the Chinese man/grandfather/gangster boss.
Victor Wong (above) was the stereotypical eccentric old Chinese man -- he usually got to play Grandpa or "supernatural" type characters such as a fortune teller. He died in 2001, so Hollywood currently needs a new eccentric old Chinese man.
Other Asian men in Hollywood in the extended. Everyone on this list has been on film and television for over twenty years, with over half of the actors having been born in the United States. These actors, mainly Chinese and Japanese have played several different ethnicities that are not their own, including Thai, Phillipino, Tibetian, Vietnamese, Singaporean, Korean, Hawaiian, and Irish.
James Shigeta is usually cast as an important person -- president of a company/country, businessman, ambassador, military officer. Sometimes he's cast as a good guy, sometimes a bad guy.
Eric Young has almost always been cast as a villain for the past 20 years. Most recently he tortured Sydney and her friends on Alias, but way before that he shot at Indiana Jones with a tommy gun.
Gedde Watanabe has also been in Hollywood for over twenty years. A bit younger than the others, he started off playing the "foreign" character -- one who can speak English, but still finds aspects of Western culture strange. Recently he's been able to break away from that typecast by playing Nurse Yosh Takata on the TV Drama "ER".
George Takei, because of his role in Star Trek pretty much only makes appearances on televsion and movies as himself, or as the voice of an animated character. This picture is from the role he played in Mulan. The lack of resemblence between the voice actor and the character is largely intentional, since the character will be dubbed over in other languages internationally by Disney.
Asian Actors Imported from China
Michael Hui and Jackie Chan
In the movie Cannonball Run, which was released 25 years ago, Michael Hui and Jackie Chan play comedic roles as the Subaru Engineer and the Japan's #1 Racecar Driver. It's one of the few roles that Jackie's had over the years that doesn't involve martial arts stunt work. Jackie Chan has been typecast as the goofy martial artist.
Chow Yun Fat is the quiet, gun-brandishing assassin
Jet Li is the quiet sword-brandishing assassin.
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