Actor Growth

Over the past few days I have been hearing so many people talking about this on how so many roles that are meant to have an Asian male playing the lead along with an Asian lady never seems to end up that way. Instead, the Asian male is replaced with a Caucasian actor and so in most films that have a couple’s role you won’t see an Asian male as the lead.

Conceptually I personally don’t see the problem as you see multicultural relationships all the time in this day in age. Of course, the biggest reason I hear all the time why you never see an Asian lead in these types of situations is because North America in general is not ready or able to relate to or sympathize with an Asian male playing something that doesn’t have some kind of crazy action role in it.

In many ways though I would say the Asian film making community is not doing enough to break these stereotypes and in many ways contribute to it. For example, during my participation in that moviemaking marathon one person told me how he was so disappointed that the character I portrayed didn’t start physically fighting back more and that some people criticized how it seems like I had no form of training when it came to say fighting.

I then looked at him and said “When was the last time you saw two business people say whip out crazy weapons and start fighting each other with high flying martial arts?” Similarly I then made him think more by saying how the story was about a guy that wasn’t a fighter but in the end he used his brain more and ended up fighting very well that way. Then it kind of clicked to him where the film was trying to be more realistic and that everything he saw began to make more sense. Sure enough, he was a person of Asian descent as well.

I even mentioned it before too where one of the roles that I have yet to play is something revolving around a dedicated romance/drama genre and sure enough auditions for these types of roles are virtually nil even from an independent circuit. The ironic thing is that there are a ton of aspiring filmmakers who are Asian here as well and usually when the script does revolve around a couple even the Asian filmmakers write the script to have a mixed couple too. So with that, how can there really be complaints from the Asian community?

It’s mostly just a matter of doing more work and getting our faces out there. Even for myself, since I do a lot of drama roles people often are shocked at that as it is not as usual to see that from an Asian in North America. Just a matter of the filmmakers being open minded at this point I’d say.

While practicing some martial arts today with a sparring partner we were talking about trying to learn skills solely from a book without practical training.  The person I was training with mentioned how he doesn’t believe that would work and I mentioned about this guy that did so purely for film.

He then commented how you can make yourself look fancy and all, but in a real world situation that person probably would stand a chance.  That has always been a question on my mind as since I’m Chinese I was prepared to be stereotyped initially for parts such as a martial artist.

Now for myself, the martial arts I learn are not very film friendly as it is meant for self defense.  I even asked my film acting instructor whether or not she felt that it would be useful to learn a more flashy style solely for film in order to increase my chances of getting seen in my early career.  Her advise was that I should just be learning what I want as if I come across a situation where I need it more than likely they will take the time to teach you it.

At this point though, the only reason I would want to learn something such as Wushu which involves more high flying techniques like some kind of gymnastic routine would be for personal growth.  The idea of learning a martial art solely for film combat just feels unproductive in terms of growing as a person personally.

While working on Samurai Girl yesterday I met a lady who was talking to me a bit about her personal experience in the film industry.  She used to do some commercial work and eventually decided to just do extra work as she didn’t like the constant rejection factor that you have to learn to deal with in this industry.

She happened to be Asian herself and she started to tell me about this recent documentary, which I can’t remember the name of, that revolved around how if you are an Asian in the film business chances are you can only succeed with stereotypical roles/traits.  Some examples that she told me was a martial artist, a computer geek/techy or a business person.

While I personally haven’t had the opportunity to work on a big production yet as an actor, my experience has been a little different.  Virtually all the roles I have done when it came to independent films have been non stereotypical and I auditioned like everyone else.

For example, one of the more recent ones I did was for a lead role about a neat freak living with a messy roommate (I was the neat freak).  With that, it was more about having the right look such as your body dimensions and age look as opposed to ethnicity.  Similarly, I recently submitted myself for an audition that needed a person to play as a teenager and they called me in out of hundreds of submissions still.

There was one interesting example though about stereotypes that crossed my mind to show that it definitely exists.  I’m currently trying to find a principal agent for myself and seeked help from a local actress.  She wanted to create a demo reel with me and one monologue that she wanted me to do was about a computer scientist of some sort and was pretty adamant about that being a contrasting scene to demonstrate my skills.

I then mentioned how this must have been because most roles for a Chinese person like myself involves stereotypes like these.  She acknowledged that sentiment and then mentioned that I should learn to embrace them as everyone is stereotyped in different ways when it comes to acting whether it be your ethnicity or nationality.

If the independent films that I have done are any indication then people are becoming more open minded about casting an Asian to play non stereotypical roles.