For the longest time, all I wanted was just a job. Just an opportunity to act, to show people what I can do. This movie, ‘Everything Everywhere All a… - Ke Huy Quan

I grew up with very traditional Chinese family values. Since I was a little kid, my parents taught me to internalize the emotions that we have instead of projecting them outward. It’s very contradicting to what an actor is. With all these internalized emotions, I just needed to spend a long time with myself and bring all of that out.

But I think I’ve cried more in the last six months than I cried in the previous 20 years. Hearing all these wonderful comments from people about how much they’ve missed me on the screen and their warm embrace of my return has made me very emotional.

The irony, like I said, is that I didn't pursue acting when I was a little kid. But as I got older, in my late teens and early 20s, I really took it seriously. That’s what I wanted to do, what I wanted my profession to be. But when I started pursuing it, there were just not a lot of opportunities for me. It was extremely difficult for an Asian actor at that time. In Hollywood, very, very few child actors make smooth and successful transitions into adult acting. It's very difficult for many, but I think it's a hundred times—a thousand times—more difficult when you are an Asian actor. I found myself at a crossroads at a very early age. Do I want to continue down a path where I just didn't see many opportunities for myself? Or do I want to go down a path, an unknown path, where I really don't know what I want to do? And I struggled for a long, long time. And at the same time, I was just hoping that phone would ring with an amazing offer to be in a movie like Indiana Jones or The Goonies, or a great role for an Asian actor, and it never came. I was so dispirited and disheartened.