Here's a quick snippet from an interview with Justin Chon of Twilight fame who can also be seen in the just released film Crossing Over (and he just turned 28 btw):
Has it been difficult being an Asian-American actor?Read the full interview down at The Twighlight Files and also catch a recent interview with him at Radaronline.com.
Of course. I’m not going to lie. If anyone tells you something different then they’re lying. It’s amazingly difficult. You’re fighting for a few spots. When you go to the auditions, you see everybody: maybe it’s for a 25 year old part, and you see people from 18 to 40 years old auditioning. It’s really hard to get producers to believe in you to pull off a non-Asian role and take that risk. It’s starting to change a little bit.
Do you think America is more accepting of Asian-American actors in more prominent roles?
I would say that they give us a chance in prominent roles but not lead roles. They’re really capitalizing on Asian-American content i.e. Streetfighter, Dragonball. There’s a lot of Asian content being made, but they don’t always cast Asian people for the movies. It is a business and if their main guy doesn’t have a proven record for bringing in numbers then they don’t want to take that risk.
Do you know many of the other Asian actors?
We all know each other and we’re all friends. That’s kinda of a good thing about the Asian-American community: everyone knows each other and eveyrone’s friends and we support each other. No one is really trashing each other.
