In his seven decades of screen work, did James Hong ever imagine that his name would be on the sidewalk of Hollywood Boulevard? “Absolutely not,” she tells PEOPLE with a giggle.
“I walk there quite often too [have said]’God, I wish I was here,’ says the 95-year-old star from Los Angeles.
But now Hong has been honored twice on the iconic sidewalk: a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and his hands and feet immortalized in cement at China’s TCL Theater.
“That’s never happened in my 70-year career,” he said Kung Fu Panda 4 says the star. “Then suddenly, in 1970, things started to fall into place!”
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James Hong at the 2022 Hollywood Walk of Fame Star Ceremony.
Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images
The exact number of Hong’s screen appearances is difficult to determine due to the sheer number of them (approximately a staggering 700), but his resume stretches from his big screen debut in 1955. Soldier of fortune — making him, as he admits, “probably the only living actor to have worked with Clark Gable” — to a hit Everything everywhere and at once.
That Oscar-winning film by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert is most credited with reviving Hong’s career, although actor Daniel Dae Kim has been fighting to campaign for his star on the Walk of Fame as recently as 2020.
Kim and Everything everywhere actress Jamie Lee Curtis presented at the Hong Kong 2022 ceremony, which featured a traditional Chinese lion dance by Shaolin Entertainment Group to bless the occasion.
The TCL Chinese Theater ceremony on February 22, which included presentations by Kwan, Scheinert, Lucy Liu and a traditional dragon dance in honor of the Lunar New Year, also fell on Hong’s 95th birthday.
“I never dreamed I’d be there,” Hong says of his cemented hands and feet, alongside John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart and others.
“I don’t agree with those guys, but I’m so glad that I was so called ‘chosen’ to be on that sidewalk because it’s not just for me, it’s for the Asian Americans that will be represented. … It will be good for the image of Hollywood.”
Hong’s newfound recognition as one of the most impressive character actors in the industry can also be attributed to a viral moment at the 2023 Screen Actors Guild Awards where he also spoke about the representation of Asian Americans.
After Michelle Yeoh yelled at her Everything everywhere as the cast accepted the award for best ensemble, Hong announced to the world that a producer had once told him “that Asians are not good enough and they are not at the box office. But look at us now, huh?”
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“For some reason it was in my soul and I just said that sentence,” he tells PEOPLE. “Just look at us. Here, we have arrived.’ That’s what Everything everywhere and at once it meant to me that we’ve come a long way as actors — we’ve come a long way.”
Still, the need to fight for justice remains a key part of Hong’s mission—and, in fact, may be the secret to his longevity.
“It’s always on my mind, in my soul,” he says of the Asian American team. “I have dedicated my whole life to this, ever since my first film was made Soldier of fortune where I was a communist soldier, and those were the only roles at the time for actors like me.”
Fighting the “hidden prejudices in this town,” as the Minnesota-born actor says, “is in that Hong blood. My father struggled to come to America… Rumor has it that my grandmother helped fight bandits. I think they carry that aggressiveness, the will to fight and survive all those years.”
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James Hong at the premiere of “Kung Fu Panda 4” in Los Angeles on March 3.
Image Press Agency/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
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And, Hong adds with a smile, “overcoming those obstacles” is exactly what helped him survive.
“I’m 95 years old and still going. “Probably, if I hadn’t fought, I would have died earlier because there was no fight,” he says.
While the self-confessed “workaholic” is busy with a documentary and memoir in development – and reprising his role as Chinese goose Mr. Ping, the adopted father of Jack Black’s panda Po in Kung Fu Panda 4 — it is clear that what motivates him is still the philosophy he advocates to his fellow artists: “You were born,” he advises. “Be what you want.”
Kung Fu Panda 4 is in theaters on Friday.
Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education