John Cho Quotes

I personally would love to see Harold and Kumar with children. I think that would be hilarious.

- John Cho

I have this nightmare that one day I will have to look at every picture I've ever taken with people in an airport or in bars or restaurants, and it will make me very sad.

- John Cho

The worst thing for a kid is to move around and switch schools, but as an actor, you go from job to job, meeting strangers and becoming very close right away. I've become adept at that.

- John Cho

For a while, I was feeling like I was always playing characters that weren't specifically Korean or specifically Asian, even - that they were characters who were originally written white, and then they would cast me. And I used to consider that a badge of honor because that meant I had avoided stereotypes.

- John Cho

One of the things I like about comedy in general is that it affords Asian Americans the opportunity to not be noble.

- John Cho

I wanted to do 'Manzanar' because I'd never done anything like it before. The spoken word there is between a drama and an essay, and I'd never worked in concert with an orchestra.

- John Cho

Culture is this thing that exists apart from our real life but is something we all have tacitly agreed to in America. And what film and television do, particularly in this country, is lay out the characters involved in this invisible agreement and dictate who and what can participate.

- John Cho

When I first started acting in college, at Cal, the thing that I loved about acting was not being onstage but going into rehearsals. The thing, as I look back on it now, that I was most attracted to, was that I felt like I'd found my family. It was just a bunch of loonies.

- John Cho

The thing about kissing men - how do people stand it? The stubble is maddening.

- John Cho

That's a huge part of being a human being: looking for love and finding a partner in this world. When you constantly play characters who don't have that life, it feels incomplete and not totally human.

- John Cho

I don't know what the next frontier is, but good comedy should put its toe into taboo waters. You have to transgress a little bit, and that area shifts with culture and with the year.

- John Cho

I think my parents were surprisingly cool with me entering the arts. Although, I think they thought it was going to be a phase, and they didn't expect me to actually stick with it, and rightfully so. They were concerned whether I could afford groceries, being an actor.

- John Cho

Typically, actors overplay jargon or toss it away in an extravagant display of casualness. Real people hit the important parts hard.

- John Cho

The key to doing 'Harold and Kumar' movies is you make it earnest. Primarily what we do is make Harold and Kumar's relationship and friendship believable, and we don't actually work on being that funny.

- John Cho

There is a real Harold Lee.

- John Cho

I get called Harold the most. I think maybe 'Harold & Kumar' fans don't know my name, and 'Star Trek' fans do know my name... Harold fans are vocal!

- John Cho

That's what it is: a 'Harold & Kumar' movie is a romance between two best friends.

- John Cho

I think obviously the 'Harold and Kumar' stuff is trying to lean head first into the raunch.

- John Cho

'Sesame Street' early on and then 'Little House on the Prairie' was a big deal in our house. I always identified with 'Little House' because they were wanderers, and there was something about being an immigrant.

- John Cho

I like to flip flop, but making your days work to find a laugh is a really good way to spend a day. I appreciate it more going away and then coming back to it.

- John Cho

The scariest thing is to go into a new situation for myself, and yet I have a job where I do that every few months, meet a hundred new people, and then have to perform in a very highly pressurized environment.

- John Cho

I think about John Lennon all the time. What would John Lennon do? What would John Lennon say if he got this part? How would he act? I don't know, but he's my moral barometer.

- John Cho

I've found it to be true that sometimes a stranger can give you advice that stays with you, utter truths the closest people in your life have trouble saying.

- John Cho

Because I sidestepped all the stereotypical roles, in a way I've made a career out of not being Asian - a lot of my roles weren't written as Asian - so there's an impulse in me that wants to take a U-turn and play a very grounded, real Asian character, maybe an immigrant.

- John Cho

What's impressed me about 'Star Trek' fans is how many generations they span and how many nations they represent. They are all over the place.

- John Cho

With acting, you are a small part of the creative process, and sometimes it is hard to feel like you are making an impact.

- John Cho

I've been called a funny person for a long time. I don't know that I know anything about comedic acting.

- John Cho

I'm not a good improv-er, which is what a lot of comedic actors are really good at. I have failed miserably when I've been asked to improvise.

- John Cho

My wife and I were worried, when we had our firstborn, about how he was going to think of himself in a mostly white neighborhood. Particularly Asian men, I feel, we suffer more than Asian women, because we're told we're not worth anything in general.

- John Cho

I like that guy Matthew Perry a lot.

- John Cho

I am a little curmudgeonly about new media.

- John Cho

I campaigned for Obama, and that was such a big component of getting the vote out, was social media.

- John Cho

When you get something off the ground, it's fantastic, and you feel really close to that group of people.

- John Cho

I try to take roles that don't fall within the parameters of any Asian stereotype.

- John Cho

The goal of Asians in the arts is plurality of roles. I've always been hindered by me over-thinking what is a stereotype and what isn't.

- John Cho

I had a stereotype in my mind of what a 'Star Trek' fans is, but I couldn't have been more wrong.

- John Cho

Movies may be as close to a document of our national culture as there is; they're supposed to represent what we believe ourselves to be. So when you don't see yourself at all - or see yourself erased - that hurts.

- John Cho

I've thought for years, sometimes against my will, about what kind of son I'm supposed to be, what's expected. Being Korean, that's a particularly charged question. Is your duty to your culture or to your parent? Is your life your own, or the second half of your parents' life? Who owns your life?

- John Cho

It's so funny that Hollywood has become so entrenched in its formulas. Because what I've experienced is that the good stuff comes from places you don't expect.

- John Cho

There was a while where every role I was getting offered was extremely noble - like the judge or the kindly nurse.

- John Cho

I've had an unusual career in that I've never had a big break, but the rent always seemed to get paid.

- John Cho

Sometimes I feel indie directors are in the game so they can make a film to get hired to do a big film - that we're all doing this person's reel.

- John Cho

I don't feel comfortable as an insider.

- John Cho

Good things will come from self-expression.

- John Cho

You're trying to grow up, and you don't want to be like your parents, and that gets mixed up with being Korean... They brought their values from Korea, and I accepted them because I didn't know anything more. But as I grow older, I feel more Korean every year; it's very strange.

- John Cho

Whenever I meet a Korean, I ask about their immigration history.

- John Cho

I grew up speaking Korean, but my dad spoke English very well. I learned a lot of how to speak English by watching television.

- John Cho

I've found that one's language abilities, especially for Korean kids like me, get frozen at the age you immigrated. So I've always associated Korea with being a child and being infantilized through my inability to speak.

- John Cho

I need my comedy to offend. That's my personal views.

- John Cho

You know, I always root for the older athlete. I root for the second album. I root for solo careers after the rock star breaks the band apart.

- John Cho

For me, the most interesting thing is longevity and sustaining a career, because that's what's truly difficult.

- John Cho

When I started acting... the community was largely Chinese-American or Japanese-American, so even then I felt like a minority in the minority.

- John Cho

I have an affinity for comedy because I like to watch them. It's an honor to make comedies because I love being able to pop something into the DVD player and laugh. I love doing it.

- John Cho

When I saw 'My Fair Lady,' I was surprised at how mean and misogynistic Henry was. Maybe that's why it's dropping out of public consciousness.

- John Cho

Most people deal with grief in an awkward way, and that can be funny.

- John Cho

Early on, I played a Chinese delivery person, and even that, which was very innocuous, felt like I was somehow betraying myself. I felt very self-conscious on set doing that role, with a crew that was almost entirely white.

- John Cho

'Star Trek' seems to be an appeal to our better nature, the side of ourselves that works toward peace and cooperation and understanding and knowledge and yearns to seek out knowledge rather than the side that wants to divide and control one another.

- John Cho

The message of 'Star Trek,' if there is one, seems to be that we should try to live up to the very best that we're capable of.

- John Cho

I don't like when an Asian-American actor says, 'I'm entering this business to change Hollywood.' It feels like the wrong reason - I would prefer they entered the business for artistic reasons, because they need to do it.

- John Cho

Ninety per cent of being a parent is just being present and available.

- John Cho

The Asian-American kids I meet respond to a democracy in the vulgarity of my roles.

- John Cho

I wanted to explore Korean-American characters. And 'Columbus' did address that. The father-son dynamic felt very real to me.

- John Cho

I would love to do Shakespeare, either onstage or on film.

- John Cho

Whenever I'm on my way to a premiere or something, I always have a good laugh in the car... because it's all so absurd - I'm one generation removed from starvation.

- John Cho

I think Hollywood acts like followers of culture and is constantly seeking to follow trends.

- John Cho

Actors are supposed to be these runaways that get in a covered wagon filled with hats and tambourines and go from town to town making people smile.

- John Cho

It's hard in America as a writer of color, an actor of color, not to get caught up in race and culture. But you're also supposed to be able to write characters and scenes in a way where it's just a matter of fact, a component.

- John Cho

With 'The Exorcist,' a lot of things went into it. I hadn't seen the show until they asked me, and then I checked the show out and thought it was very well done.

- John Cho

I just didn't see anyone on TV who looked like me, and then I saw George Takei being cool and piloting the spaceship on television.

- John Cho

I want to walk the bases - I want to do all the actor-y stuff.

- John Cho

I'd like to be in a Western.

- John Cho

Asians narratively in shows are insignificant. They're the cop or the waitress or whatever it is. You see them in the background.

- John Cho

The biggest boss has the clearest desk.

- John Cho

'Lost' was a phenomenon, like Elvis.

- John Cho

It'd be nice if Asian actors could be perceived as profitable, which is the bottom line. We're perceived as not mattering much fiscally.

- John Cho

I've played roles that aren't expected of an Asian.

- John Cho

As long as the rent's getting paid, you don't think about getting out of the game.

- John Cho

I have a few go-to moves like jazz hands, shake the booty, stupid eyes. It was once a mating ritual, but now it's all about looking silly and making the kids smile.

- John Cho

I accept what people say. I don't have time to dissect it.

- John Cho

I write, and I sing, and I play a little guitar. I mean, it's tiny. Ba-dump-bum!

- John Cho

Even though there's a lot of horror from Asia in the American cinematic tradition, I hadn't seen Asians at the center of it.

- John Cho

I feel like there's this need that the Asian-American community has to feel like people. It's something that Asians in Asia do not understand about us.

- John Cho

Our species likes being social.

- John Cho

Everyone posts everything in real time as it happens.

- John Cho

There's only so much I can do to effect change - and really, the thing that I can do that's most effective is to work and to do good work. That, I feel, is speaking out in its own way.

- John Cho

To be able to communicate with people on the other side of the globe is interesting, in an instant.

- John Cho

What was exciting to me in talking to Kogonada was I was just very convinced that he was a very real and pure artist. He was so uninterested in the commercial game.

- John Cho

It just seemed hedonistic when I first started acting. It was a pleasurable thing. But as I look back on it now, I understand that it was a journey of the self for me.

- John Cho

I'm not an activist, I'm an actor. I don't want to be an activist.

- John Cho

As an immigrant, I learned by watching other people.

- John Cho

I grew up watching the Lakers.

- John Cho

I got sort of sick of seeing Asians being the blank, bland real estate agent or something. I didn't care. It didn't mean anything to me.

- John Cho

People expect me to be funnier.

- John Cho

I'm not a natural-born actor. So it's been a very slow learning curve for me.

- John Cho

The more roles there are, the more actors there are.

- John Cho

Part of my mission as an actor has been to define what an American is.

- John Cho

Just because it's in a movie doesn't mean it's real.

- John Cho

I don't know if I trust entertainment to teach anyone anything.

- John Cho

I didn't think it was possible for Asians to be actors.

- John Cho

I think the ability to emphasize is, in large part, what makes me a man and not a boy.

- John Cho

When you're not born in this country, you kind of study how people talk and how they act, and you try and break things down.

- John Cho

When Mindy Kaling asks, I try my best to say yes.

- John Cho

Sometimes I feel like I don't dream big enough.

- John Cho