James Hong has revealed he’s not hanging up the acting gloves anytime soon despite being 94 years old.
In the words of the great Mark Twain, if you ‘find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life’. The veteran actor is living proof of this.
While speaking to Entertainment Weekly, the ‘Seinfeld Four’ star, recently admitted that he has no plans to retire.
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"There's not that many roles for 90-year-old men," he told the outlet.
However, he explained that Everything Everywhere All At Once has ‘opened up a whole new ball game for me’.
Hong landed in Hollywood in the 1950s, where roles for Asian actors were few and far between.
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Despite this, he never lost hope, and his relentless approach eventually made him a working actor.
"All those early years when I was averaging 10 movies or TV shows a year, I just kept going,” he said.
And with a career spanning seven decades with more than 600 credits to his name, some of his most renowned projects include Big Trouble in Little China, Blade Runner, Chinatown, Mulan and, of course, that notorious Seinfeld episode where he played a maître d'hôtel.
While reflecting on the experience, he said: "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?"
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And still, the actor is hitting it out of the ballpark, as last year the actor earned a SAG Award for his performance as Gong Gong, a role based on the old Chinese men who used to come into his father’s Minneapolis herb store.
"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,” he said.
Most notably, when Hong took the stage at the 2023 SAG Awards, he recalled how once a racist producer told him Asians ‘were not good enough, and they are not [in the] box office’.
He fired back in his speech: “But, look at us now, huh?"
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Hong is set to appear in the upcoming film Patsy Lee & The Keepers of the 5 Kingdoms.
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