There are many ways you can make money. Certain ways will make you happy, certain other ways will make other people happy. But if you go in because there's money in there, you're bound to fail, bound to fail!
For the past few years, I was the more visible Asian performer, and I think it gave young girls a kind of role model showing it's possible to actually reach success doing movies.
I would never offer advice without the person asking for it. I, in general, don't believe in giving advice, actually, as a human being I don't.
Since my mom is the President of Ballet Hawaii, I'm always in touch with stuff going on.
When you feel so strongly about something and other people feel equally strongly, you have to feel stronger about it in order to succeed.
Acting is actually private.
If you know how to do a job very well, you keep doing it.
I enjoy going back to work now because cinema is going through an exciting period because young people are now going back to the movie theaters. But things are different though.
I went to Indiana University for college for a couple of years where I double majored in dance and journalism, and after my sophomore year there, I went to the San Francisco Ballet school for the summer, but then they offered me a scholarship to stay for the year. That's where I danced after the year they offered me a contract with the company.
The difference between me and American-born actors is that I came here with the expectation of not being treated fairly.
How I was raised is what I am today.
I'm more interested in...I'm more of a descendent. I'm more critical. It comes from a different place and nowadays the young people know how to make just light entertainment.
The romantic love we feel toward the opposite sex is probably one extra help from God to bring you together, but that's it. All the rest of it, the true love, is the test.
There is no theoretical study of motherhood. You know, before I became a mother, I did play a mother, but I was like - I was more thinking of my own mother. I was doing my mother.
All teenagers have this desire to somehow run away.
In order to dance professionally, you have to start at a young age. No matter what, your muscle structure and your bones have to be groomed from a very young age. Nobody wakes up at 17 and decides to become a ballet dancer. I'm saying that and someone's going to be born tomorrow who decides to do that and I'm going to have my foot in my mouth.
Since age 14, I know what actors fear, what they like; I know how to get things out of them and I listen to them better, since I've been there.
There are a lot of stereotypes to be broken which I think a lot of us are doing. What I do is, as soon as people try to pin me down to one kind of part, I'll play a very different kind of role, so it explodes that stereotype.
I don't want to tell people what I make. It's a lot more than I ever dreamed of as a kid. I never think about it.
I take class. I'm always ballet ready. I'm ready to go - got my tights and my shoes.
My fairy-tale life ended the moment I wanted to apply for a passport.
Physical hunger and physical poverty is something I could only imagine. I've been poor when I was in China... As kids we never had to starve, but just didn't have enough meat, enough rice.
I will always have a career. I believe in working. I don't believe that taking care of your house and children is enough for a woman. You don't feel complete.
I never went on an audition - when they were really looking at everybody.
All Asian parents are into your children having a respectable, decent stable job. Acting was unimaginable to my parents.
