Actress

I saw 'Joy Luck Club' when it came out, so that was early mid-'90s, and I remember seeing it with my long-time collaborator, Mina Shum. We'd just done 'Double Happiness,' and we saw this movie, and we were weeping. Like, shuddering weeping. Weeping more than really the film deserved.

All the jobs I've gotten in the last two years are because directors have seen the work I've done - indie films, plays, short student films, TV - since I moved to the states in 1996. I mean, I have an entire career in Canada that nobody has seen.

I'd be so fascinated to talk to a psychologist or sociologist about the deep psychological impact of seeing oneself represented. I don't think we've really touched the surface of what it does to the psyche of a people if the only image of you out there is negative. Or if it's never out there.

With small breasts, you don't have to wear a bra with dresses that have some support. It feels sexy without one.

It takes a long time to free oneself from chatter - goals, social media, image, persona. And if you're able to move through in that way, you can actually start trying to create from a different place.

When your life changes and you become a more public person, in some ways you need to be a more closed person, you know?

People ask me what I'm writing. They think I'm Sandra Tsing Loh. Or they ask about stand-up. 'No, that's Margaret Cho.' I really think there is this kind of glomming, that they think we are somehow all the same person.

For me, I just am so grateful to be an actor.

Becoming an actor? If it's not a calling, don't do it. It's too hard.

I was very young when 'The Carol Burnett Show' came out, but that kind of comedy and the spontaneity of her, I think it really deeply affected me within just the joy of performance.

The best thing I've ever taken from a set is the rug in Owen and Cristina's apartment on Grey's Anatomy before they broke up.

I love my hair. When I was young it had weird kinks and cowlicks in it, but I just grew into it. You grow into a lot of things.

Wherever Koreans are, they set up a church.

I grew up in so much church: English-speaking church, Korean church.

I grew up never seeing myself on-screen, and it's really important to me to give people who look like me a chance to see themselves. I want to see myself as the hero of any story. I want to see myself save the world from the bomb.

When I saw 'Fleabag,' and when this script came to me, there is a uniqueness and a dark naughtiness to Phoebe Waller-Bridge's sensibility that I did gravitate towards, very much.

I take it extremely seriously to do absolutely the best work possible and the truest work possible, because I feel like that is what's going to resonate not only for myself but hopefully for an audience.

I remember everyone in high school thought I should be a journalist because I looked like Connie Chung.

The beginning of my career was so brilliant. It wasn't until ten years later that I went, 'Oh, that was a big, fat fluke and, boy, was I ever lucky.'

As a working actor, all I want to do is work. That's it. It's terrifying when you don't work. It's very hard when you don't work. There have been times when I've been out of work for like six months. I feel theatre to me is like manna.