I come from a big family of brothers and sisters and family dramas and honor and dishonor.
After 'Hook,' it was so sad for all of us to watch the set get destroyed. We were at the end of 'Hook,' and we're walking off the Sony lot and we're literally seeing the boat get destroyed. That was the sad thing, seeing that go.
I kind of got popular as a spoken word artist, and I ended up doing some ads and audio stuff for Nike and Sprite.
I came up in the '80s and '90s - there was no engagement with the fan base.
It's weird because I grew up in this town, so the things I really dug, I was constantly around them. Like Alyssa Milano - I had the biggest crush on her from TV, but I also saw her around town at parties. It's just funny.
Working with Robin Williams, and Bob Hopkins, and Dustin Hoffman and you're talking about 'gods,' really, in our industry. You look at legends everyday. It was so impactful to me as a young artist.
For me, my first fandom was 'Star Wars.'
As far as geek culture, I didn't grow up in the comic con geek culture lane, then I started doing Comic Cons seeing the impact of it. The character, Rufio living on.
I've actually had a great career in Hollywood. I've been a working actor my whole life.
It's illegal to hire or fire anybody because of their race, appearance, or sexual orientation, but in Hollywood, ironically, it's the reason people will hire or not hire you.
Depictions of race have changed so much since, like, the '50s, where white people just played every race. But the pendulum swings both ways: I'm Filipino-American. If I had to wait for a Filipino role to come out to get work, I couldn't eat. There are barely any roles out there.
I love being part of the 'Avatar' family.
I am a California Kid.
In Hollywood, I was never restricted to just one Asian character. I've been cast as a Chinese, a Vietnamese, a Korean, a Japanese and a Cambodian.
But being Asian American, a lot of Asian American guys come up to me who are in interracial relationships and they tell me, 'Growing up my partner had a big crush on you and so you're probably one of the reasons why she married me, so thank you.'
Some people have such strong memories of me as a young actor, that it's hard to see me as anything else.
But everyone comes to Hollywood hoping to get a role people are going to remember them for, and I get girls saying I was their first crush, or Asian guys saying Rufio was the first time they saw an Asian kid on-screen that wasn't nerdy or stereotypical, so I was lucky the character that resonated was cool.
The most fascinating thing for me is that 'Peter Pan' is a fairy tale, but now, this Filipino kid is a part of the folklore. Can you imagine telling the story of 'Sleeping Beauty' or 'Cinderella,' and all of a sudden there's a Filipino kid in there after all these years?
'Dead Poets Society' was a very influential film on me and so talking about that movie with him, he just inspired me to continue writing poetry and we talked a lot about our favourite poets. My wrap present from Robin was a beautiful limited edition copy of Walt Whitman's 'Leaves of Grass' and that's a great memory for me.
It's not always enjoyable to go back and look at things in your life. Things that you're not proud of, you definitely don't want to confront; dark times that you've already gotten over.
