The American actor, voice artist, producer and director, James Hong has worked in over 600 roles till date and is still gracefully willing to go on and on. Beginning his career in 1950s he gave voice for lot of Asian Movies and continued to be the voice artist only until 1956 when he was casted as Jimmy Ling in “Red Tentacles”. A few of his latest roles were in “The day the earth stood still”, “True crime: Streets of LA” and “Balls of Fury”.
He voiced in Kung Fu Panda as Mr. Ping for which he was nominated for an Annie Award. He won the Annie Award when he later reprised the role on “Kung u Panda Holiday Special”. He had even voiced in Star War Rebels for Azmorigan.
Having worked for more than 600 roles today the actor recalls that it was never the original plan he had in life. He instead had completed his civil engineering as per the wish of his parents. I don’t think it would be easy to find any Chinese parent who would be convinced enough to let their child have aspirations of becoming an actor.
They are more inclined towards convincing their kids to choose a more stable and professional job for a living. Since life always has its own plans for everyone, how James could be left from the magic of life. Alongside his job in Los Angeles County building roads he continued to try his luck in acting and comedy and luckily got his first big break in “You bet your life”.
He recalls that in his career he was mostly playing laundrymen because of how stereotypical Hollywood was, but never did he let this affect his abilities. There is a theater set up by Hong for young talents and John Cho, George Takei, Randall Park are all a part of it.
The theatre was started by him only because he knew that just like him other Asian Americans never got the role they deserved.
With the help of his theatre he has helped actors come up and display their talent which lead to them getting noticed beyond just being an extra.
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