For me, I do my best work when I feel completely relaxed and not being judged.
Growing up the way I did, being an actor in Hollywood was definitely never a plausible career choice at all.
For a good part of my childhood, we were super poor and lived in government housing. I don't characterize the American dream as being successful and having a lot of material wealth to show for it. I did fine without it for a really long time.
I really want to work on characters that have a lot of complexity and you don't always get that in comic book movies because they're not character explorations. I have nothing against movies like that, but I do see them as kind of like a cheeseburger.
I don't want anyone to think I took this role in 'Downsizing' because it was the only role available to me. I'm not a passive participant in it.
With 'Downsizing,' a lot of the discussion hasn't been about the film itself, but about cultural and political conversations happening outside of it. It's being digested in the context of the time.
On 'Downsizing,' I had a trailer, and I got to bring my dog to work, and I thought, 'I've made it: I'm bringing my dog to work.'
I like to be very simple in my lifestyle. My only extravagance is... I buy lots of toys and meats for my dog.
I appreciate people who sway to the beat of their own tambourine, like Iris Apfel and Helena Bonham Carter.
I'm really into ghost towns. I've driven cross-country the past few summers, and I would stop at some ghost towns along the way. They're like a microcosm of America as a whole.
I love Chicago for several reasons, but one of the best is that I was so intrigued that you have wild rabbits running around in the city. I never had seen bunnies in such a large urban environment before.
I think that a lot of actors of color have said that it's a wonderful thing to play a role that doesn't have a race and that is kind of open to any sort of interpretation. I completely understand that, but at the same time, I just want Asian characters that are well-written.
Americans have a wonderful way of just butchering everyone's names.
I think one in five Americans has a disability of some sort. That's 20% of the population, and yet we rarely ever see people with disabilities on-screen, and their stories and their resilience and their zest for life and their humor and their humanity.
