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Anna May Wong, the first Chinese-American movie star, was born Wong Liu Tsong on January 3, 1905, in Los Angeles, California, to laundryman Wong Sam Sing and his wife, Lee Gon Toy. A third-generation American, she managed to have a substantial acting career during a deeply racist time when the taboo against miscegenation meant that Caucasian actresses were cast as "Oriental" women in lead parts opposite Caucasian leading men. Even when the role called for playing opposite a Caucasian in yellowface, as with Paul Muni's as the Chinese peasant Wang Lung in The Good Earth (1937), Wong was rejected, since she did not fit a Caucasian's imagined ideal look for an Asian woman. The discrimination she faced in the domestic industry caused her to go to Europe for work in English and German films. Her name, which she also spelled Wong Lew Song, translates literally as "Frosted Yellow Willows" but has been interpreted as "Second-Daughter Yellow Butterfly." Her family gave her the English-language name Anna May. She was born on Flower Street in downtown Los Angeles in an integrated neighborhood dominated by Irish and Germans, one block from Chinatown, where her father ran the Sam Kee Laundry.
The Wong family moved back to Chinatown two years after Liu Tsong's birth, but in 1910 they uprooted themselves, moving to a nearby Figueroa Street neighborhood where they had Mexican and East European neighbors. There were two steep hills between the Wongs' new home and Chinatown, but as her biographer, Colgate University history professor Graham Russell Gao Hodges, points out, those hills put a psychological as well as physical distance between Liu Tsong and Chinatown. Los Angeles' Chinatown already was teeming with movie shoots when she was a girl. She would haunt the neighborhood nickelodeons, having become enraptured with the early "flickers." Though her traditional father strongly disapproved of his daughter's cinephilia, as it deflected her from scholastic pursuits, there was little he could do about it, as Liu was determined to be an actress. The film industry was in the midst of relocating from the East Coast to the West, and Hollywood was booming. Liu Tsong would haunt movie shoots as she had earlier haunted the nickelodeons. Her favorite stars were Pearl White, of The Perils of Pauline (1914) serial fame, and White's leading man, Crane Wilbur. She was also fond of Ruth Roland.
Educated at a Chinese-language school in Chinatown, she would skip school to watch film shoots in her neighborhood. She made tip money from delivering laundry for her father, which she spent on going to the movies. Her father, if he discovered she had gone to the movies during school hours, would spank her with a bamboo stick. Around the time she was nine years old, she began begging filmmakers for parts, behavior that got her dubbed "C.C.C." for "curious Chinese child."
Liu Tsong's first film role was as an uncredited extra in Metro Pictures' The Red Lantern (1919), starring Alla Nazimova as a Eurasian woman who falls in love with an American missionary. The film included scenes shot in Chinatown. The part was obtained for her by a friend of her father's (without his knowledge) who worked in the movie industry. Retaining the family surname "Wong" and the English-language "Christian" name bestowed on her by her parents, Liu Tsong Americanized herself as "Anna May Wong" for the movie industry, though she would not receive an on-screen credit for another two years.
The rechristened Anna May Wong appeared in bit parts in movies starring Priscilla Dean, Colleen Moore and the Japanese-born Sessue Hayakawa, the first Asian star of American movies. Due to her father's demands, she had an adult guardian at the studio, and would be locked in her dressing room between scenes if she was the only Asian in the cast. Initially balancing school work and her budding film career, she eventually dropped out of Los Angeles High School to pursue acting full time. She was aided by the fact that, though still a teenager, she looked more mature than her real age.
Director Marshall Neilan cast the teenage Anna May in a bit part in his film Dinty (1920), then gave her her first credited role in the "Hop" sequence of Bits of Life (1921), the American movie industry's first anthology film. In "Hop" Wong played Toy Ling, the abused wife of Lon Chaney's character Chin Gow, which the Man of a Thousand Faces played in yellowface. She next appeared in support of John Gilbert in Fox's Shame (1921) before being cast in her first major role at the age of 17, the lead in The Toll of the Sea (1922). She played Lotus Flower in this adaptation of the opera "Madame Butterfly," which moved the action from Japan to China. "The Toll of the Sea" was the first feature film shot entirely in Technicolor's two-strip color process. By appearing top-billed in this romantic melodrama, Anna became the first native-born Asian performer to star in a major Hollywood movie. Most portrayals of Asian women were done by Caucasian actresses in "yellow-face," such as the 1915 Madame Butterfly (1915) starring "America's Sweetheart" Mary Pickford (who was born in Toronto, Canada) in the title role. In "The Toll of the Sea," Anna May's character perpetuates the stereotype of the Asian "lotus blossom," a self-sacrificial woman who surrenders her life for the love of a Caucasian man. The film was a hit, and it showcased Wong in a preternaturally mature and restrained performance. This breakthrough should have launched Anna May Wong as a star, but for one thing: She was Chinese in a country that excluded (by law) Chinese from emigrating to the US, that forbade (by law) Chinese from marrying Caucasians and that generally excluded (by law or otherwise) Chinese from the culture at large, except for bit roles as heavies in the national consciousness.
"The Toll of the Sea" made Anna May Wong a known, and thus a marketable, commodity in Hollywood. She became the #1 actress when a young Asian female part had to be cast, but unfortunately lead roles for Asians were few and far between. Instead of becoming a star, this beautiful woman with a complexion described as "a rose blushing through old ivory" continued to be stuck in supporting roles, as in Tod Browning's melodrama Drifting (1923) and the western Thundering Dawn (1923). She even played an Eskimo in The Alaskan (1924). She appeared as Tiger Lily, "Chieftainess of the Indians," in Paramount's prestigious production of J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan (1924), but the role was very small (the film was shot on Santa Catalina Island, where the cast stayed during the production.
The 170-cm-tall (5'7", although other sources cite her height as 5'4½") beauty was known as the world's best-dressed woman and widely considered to have the loveliest hands in the cinema. Her big breakthrough after her auspicious start with "The Toll of the Sea" finally came when Douglas Fairbanks cast her in a supporting role as a treacherous Mongol slave in his Middle Eastern/Arabian Nights extravaganza The Thief of Bagdad (1924). The $2-million blockbuster production made her known to critics and the movie-going public. For better or worse, a star, albeit of the stereotypical "Dragon Lady" type, was born.
Despite her waxing fame, she was limited to supporting roles, as Caucasian actresses, including most improbably Myrna Loy, continued to be cast as Asian women in lead roles from the 1920s through the 1940s, despite the ready availability of Anna May Wong. She was unable to attract lead parts despite her beauty and proven acting talent, even in films featuring Asian women, but she did carve out a career as a supporting player in everything from A-list movies to two-reel comedies and serials. The characters she played typically were duplicitous or murderous vamps who often reaped the wages of their sin by being raped. It was a demeaning apprenticeship that most Caucasian actresses did not have to go through. Anna wanted was to play modern American women all through her career but was thwarted because of racism. Later, when she journeyed to Europe to escape the typecasting of Hollywood, she told journalist Doris Mackie, "I was so tired of the parts I had to play. Why is it that the screen Chinese is always the villain? And so crude a villain--murderous, treacherous, a snake in the grass."
Wong embodied the Caucasian ideal of a foreign exotic beauty, an alien presence despite her American citizenship. The movie magazine "Pictures" published a memoir of hers in 1926 in which she complained, "A lot of people, when they first meet me, are surprised that I speak and write English without difficulty. But why shouldn't I? I was born right here in Los Angeles and went to the public schools here. I speak English without any accent at all. But my parents complain that the same cannot be said of my Chinese. Although I have gone to Chinese schools, and always talk to my father and mother in our native tongue, it is said that I speak Chinese with an English accent!". Many Chinese-Americans considered themselves "Chinese in America," an attitude bolstered by the anti-Chinese, anti-Asian attitude of the US government and the American culture. In her memoir, Wong referred to herself as "Chinese" or "Americanized Chinese," but not as an "American" or "Chinese-American."
Anna May Wong appeared as a dancer in a play within a movie shot in Technicolor for the Ronald Colman vehicle His Supreme Moment (1925), but her Hollywood output generally was undistinguished. In 1926 she seems to have appeared in a "race" film made by Chinese-Americans for a Chinese-American audience, The Silk Bouquet (1926) (aka "The Dragon Horse"). Moving between Poverty Row and the majors, she appeared again with Lon Chaney in Mr. Wu (1927) at MGM and with Warner Oland and Dolores Costello in Old San Francisco (1927) at Warner Brothers. Warners also cast her in support of Oriental yellowface queen Myrna Loy in The Crimson City (1928). Despite her WASP looks and red hair, Loy in Chinese yellowface had become a major "Oriental" star in American films desiring an exotic element. This indignity may have been what pushed Wong to seek her future somewhere other than Hollywood.
She moved to Europe in 1928, where she made movies in the UK and Germany. She made her debut on the London stage with the young up-and-coming Laurence Olivier in the play "The Circle of Chalk." After receiving a drubbing for her voice and singing from the London critics, she paid a Cambridge University tutor to improve her speech, with the result that she acquired an upper-crust English accent. Later she appeared in Vienna, Austria, in the play "Springtime."
European directors appreciated Wong's unique talents and beauty, and they used her in ways that stereotype-minded Hollywood, hemmed in by American prejudice, would not or could not. Moving to Germany to appear in German films, she became acquainted with German film personalities, including Marlene Dietrich and actress-filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. She learned German and French and began to develop a continental European attitude and outlook. In Europe she was welcomed as a star. According to her biographer Graham Russell Gao Hodges, Wong hobnobbed with "an intellectual elite that included princes, playwrights, artists and photographers who clamored to work with her." Anna May Wong was featured in magazines all over the world, far more than actresses of a similar level of accomplishment. She became a media superstar, and her coiffure and complexion were copied, while "coolie coats" became the rage. According to Hodges, "[S]he was the one American star who spoke to the French people, more than Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford or Mary Pickford, the top American actresses of the time." But, ironically, "[S]he's the one who's now forgotten." Wong was cast in Ewald André Dupont's silent film Piccadilly (1929) as a maid who is fired from her job at a London nightclub after dancing on top of a table, then rehired as a dancer to infuse the club with exotic glamour. Her first talkie was The Flame of Love (1930) (aka "The Road to Dishonour", although some sources claim it was "Song" aka "Wasted Love" in that same year), which was released by British International Pictures. In a time before dubbing, when different versions of a single film were filmed in different languages, Wong played in the English, French and German versions of the movie.
Paramount Pictures offered her a contract with the promise of lead roles in major productions. Returning to the US in 1930, Wong appeared on Broadway in the play "On the Spot." It was a hit, running for 167 performances, and she moved on to Hollywood and Paramount, where she starred in an adaptation of Sax Rohmer's novel "Daughter of Fu Manchu" called Daughter of the Dragon (1931). She was back in stereotype-land, this time as the ultimate "Dragon Lady," who with her father Fu Manchu (played by ethnic Swede Warner Oland, the future Charlie Chan) embodied the evil "Yellow Peril." While "Daughter of the Dragon" may have been B-movie pulp, it enabled Wong to show off her talent by delivering a powerful performance.
Her best role in Hollywood in the early 1930s was in support of Marlene Dietrich in Josef von Sternberg's Oscar-winning classic Shanghai Express (1932). However, Hollywood in the 1930s was as racist as it had been in the Roaring Twenties, and MGM refused to cast her in its 1932 production of The Son-Daughter (1932), for which she did a screen-test, as she was "too Chinese to play a Chinese." Helen Hayes played the role in yellow-face. Similarly, she was later kept out of both a lead and supporting role in MGM's prestige production of The Good Earth (1937), its filming of Pearl S. Buck's popular novel, after flunking another screen test for failing to live up to a white man's idea of what "looked" Chinese. MGM screen-tested her for the lead role of O-Lan, the sympathetic wife of Chinese farmer Wang Lung (to be played by Paul Muni, personally cast in the part by Irving Thalberg). She also was considered for the supporting role of Lotus, Wang Lung's concubine. Anna, an ethnic Chinese, lost out on both roles to two Austrian women, Luise Rainer and Tilly Losch, as Albert Lewin, the Thalberg assistant who was casting the film, vetoed Wong and other ethnic Chinese because their looks didn't fit his conception of what Chinese people should look like. Ironically, the year "The Good Earth" came out, Wong appeared on the cover of Look Magazine's second issue, which labeled her "The World's Most Beautiful Chinese Girl." Stereotyped in America as a dragon lady, the cover photo had her holding a dagger. Luise Rainer would win the Best Actress Oscar for her performance of O-Lan in Chinese yellowface.
There were practical considerations for MGM's refusal to cast Wong opposite Muni. It was illegal in many states, including California, for Asians to marry Caucasians, and featuring an interracial couple, even if they were playing the same race, likely would mean the movie would be rejected by many theater chains in regions in which anti-Asian prejudice was particularly severe, such as the South. The new Motion Picture Production Code of 1934 forbid black/white miscegenation and MGM did cast Walter Connelly (a white actor) opposite Soo Yong (a Chines-American actress) as a married couple. Anna May returned to England, reportedly distraught at the injustice perpetrated by MGM and her home country. In England she alternated between films and the stage, but she was obliged to return to the US to fulfill her Paramount contract. She appeared in two Robert Florey-directed pictures, Daughter of Shanghai (1937) as a non-stereotypical Asian-American female lead, and Dangerous to Know (1938). She also appeared in major roles in King of Chinatown (1939) and Island of Lost Men (1939).
Anna May Wong did not appear in films from 1939-41, when she was cast as a supporting player in Ellery Queen's Penthouse Mystery (1941), an entry in the B-movie series. Her last two starring roles in films were in a pair of anti-Japanese propaganda films, Bombs Over Burma (1942) and Lady from Chungking (1942), both of which were made by Producers Releasing Corp., the lowest of the Poverty Row studios. The major studios, when shooting propaganda films requiring a sympathetic Asian lead, reverted to the old practice of casting Caucasians in yellow-face, no matter how absurd the result.
As her movie career went into eclipse in the 1940s (she would not appear in another motion picture until 1949), she found work on the stage and in radio and then in the new medium of television. Wong wrote a preface to the book "New Chinese Recipes" in 1942, which was one of the first Chinese cookbooks printed in the US. The proceeds from the cookbook were dedicated to United China Relief.
Though Wong was vocal in her opposition to stereotypes and typecasting, and was one of Hollywood's more memorable victims of racism in being denied leading roles in A-list pictures because the racist mores of the times prevented an Asian woman from kissing a Caucasian actor, she was considered socially suspect by her own people. The roles she was forced to accept in order to have an acting career, as well as her status as a single woman, disgusted many Chinese in America and in her ancestral homeland, where actresses were equated with prostitutes and where women were still played by men in classical opera. On a trip to China in 1936, Anna May was welcomed by the country's cultural elite in cosmopolitan Beijing and Shanghai, but she had to abandon a trip to her parents' ancestral village when her progress was blocked by a crowd of protesters. Someone in the crowed denounced her with "Down with Huang Liu Tsong, the stooge that disgraces China. Don't let her go ashore." Upon her return from China, Wong was determined to play Chinese characters more authentically, but her only options were to reject roles she deemed racist or to try to soften them from within the belly of the beast. Ultimately for this proud woman, it was a losing battle.
Chinese nationalism had been on the upswing since Yat-sen Sun ended the Manchu Empire in 1911 and was rife in reaction to the war of aggression launched against China by the Empire of Japan. Chinese nationalists, concerned about the portrayal of Chinese people as evil incarnate in American popular culture, were offended by Wong's portrayals of Asians and exotics. Though she would spend the World War II years working for Chinese charities and relief agencies, she was snubbed by Madame Chiang, the sister-in-law of Yat-sen Sun and wife of Kai-Shek Chiang, the army general who led the Nationalist Chinese, during Madame Chiang's 1942-43 propaganda tour of the US. Her biographer Hodges claims this was the beginning of a consensus among Chinese and Chinese-Americans that Wong was an embarrassment. Chinese and Chinese-Americans chose to blame her rather than Hollywood for the demeaning stereotypes she had to play in order to work. The result of this new consensus, according to Hodges, was that "her memory has been washed away."
Anna May's career in motion pictures was virtually finished after the war. She got her own TV series, The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong (1951), on the Dumont Network, playing a Chinese detective in a role written expressly for her, a character who was even given her real Chinese name. The half-hour program, which ran weekly from August 27 to November 21, 1951, was the first TV show to star an Asian-American.
Wong's personal relationships typically were with older Caucasian men, but California law forbade marriage between Asians and Caucasians until 1948. One of her white lovers offered to marry her in Mexico, but the couple's intentions became known and he backed off when his Hollywood career was jeopardized. Wong mused about marrying a Chinese man at times, but the Chinese culture held actresses to be on a par with prostitutes, which made her suspect marriage material. She was afraid that the mores of her culture likely meant that marrying a Chinese would force her to quit her career and be an obedient wife.
Anna May Wong appeared in over 50 American, English and German films in her career, making her the first global Chinese-American movie star. She was forced to fight against racism and stereotyping all her professional life, while simultaneously being criticized by Chinese at home and abroad for perpetuating stereotypes in the media. Despite this tremendous burden, the beautiful woman assayed an elegance and sophistication on-screen that made her the paradigm of Asian women for a generation of movie audiences.
Anna May Wong loved reading, and her favorite subjects spanned a wide range, everything from Asian history and Tzu Lao to William Shakespeare. She never married but occupied her time with golf, horses, and skiing. Wong smoked, drank too much, and suffered from depression. She was poised to make a comeback as a character actress on the big screen toward the end of her life, having appeared as Lana Turner's maid in Ross Hunter's sudsy potboiler Portrait in Black (1960). She was cast in the role of Madame Liang in Flower Drum Song (1961), the movie version of Richard Rodgers's and Oscar Hammerstein II's Broadway musical "Flower Drum Song," but before shooting could begin she passed away.
Anna May Wong died of a massive heart attack on February 3, 1961, in Santa Monica, CA, after a long struggle against Laennec's cirrhosis, a disease of the liver. She was 56 years old. Her fame lives on, four decades after her death. She is a part of American popular consciousness, chosen as one of the first movie stars to be featured on a postage stamp. And the interest in her continues: a play about Anna entitled "China Doll--The Imagined Life of an American Actress," written by Elizabeth Wong, had its premiere at Maine's Bowdoin College in 1997. A lecture and film series, "Rediscovering Anna May Wong," was held at the UCLA Film and Television Archive in 2004, sponsored by "Playboy" publisher Hugh Hefner. That same year New York City's Museum of Modern Art held its own tribute to Wong, "Retrospective of a Chinese-American Screen Actress." Finally she was getting the respect in her own country that was denied her during her career.
A biography by Colgate University history professor Graham Russell Gao Hodges, "Anna May Wong: From Laundryman's Daughter to Hollywood Legend," was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2004. Hodges considers Anna May's life and career to be amazing, particularly in light of the fact that her star has yet to be eclipsed by any other Asian-American female star, despite the change in attitudes. Finally, in 2004, the British Film Institute restored E.A. Dupont's 1929 silent film "Piccadilly".- Director
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Yoko Ono was born on Saturday, February 18th, 1933, in her ancestral estate in Tokyo, Japan. Her father, Eisuke Ono, was the descendant of a 9th Century Emperor of Japan. Her mother, Isoko Yasuda Ono, was the granddaughter of Zenijiro Yasuda, the founder of Yasuda Bank. Yoko was two years old when she was brought to California, and joined her father for the first time. She returned to Japan before WWII and survived the bombings of Tokyo in 1945. Yoko went to school with Emperor Hirohito's two sons. Though boys and girls were separated, Yoko was visited by Emperor's son Yoshi, and in turn she visited the boy's school in defiance of the rules. In the early 50s she and her parents moved to New York. She went to Sarah Lawrence College, where she was particularly adept in music, with her perfect pitch and untamed creativity. She married a Julliard student, Toshi Ichiyanagi, and moved to Manhattan. Her admiration with Franz Kafka, Vincent van Gogh, and Arnold Schönberg gave root and was fertilized by the New York avant-garde scene. In 1960, Yoko Ono & her friend La Monte Young staged the legendary loft events on Chambers Street. She also provided the loft for John Cage and his ground-braking classes of experimental music. She collaborated with Karlheinz Stockhausen, Nam June Paik, George Maciunas and Fluxus. Yoko cut herself from her parents and was on her own, working as a waitress, an apartment manager, and a music teacher in New York's public schools.
In 1962, after separating from Toshi, she gave in to her parents and returned to Japan. There, she heavily suffered from a clinical depression, and was locked up in a mental hospital. Anthony Cox went to Japan and managed to release Yoko Ono from captivity. She married Cox in Tokyo, later in the year, and their daughter, (as she became a mother), Kyoko, was born on Saturday, August 3rd, 1963. Cox became her artistic assistant. But in 1964 they separated and Cox returned to New York. Yoko joined him later in 1964 with Kyoko. She dreamed up the concept for 'Bottoms' (1966), completed only after 365 friends and volunteers provided their naked buttocks for close-ups. Her ad was "Intelligent-looking bottoms wanted for filming. Possessors of unintelligent-looking ones need not apply." Yoko promoted 'Bottoms' (1966) by being tied to a bronze lion in London's Trafalgar Square. While there, she first met her future husband-to-be (also 3rd & last), John Lennon at her art show in London on Wednesday evening, November 9th, 1966. At first they were very impressed with each other's intellect, personalities & everything else followed later. They married. John was lambasted by the British public. Yoko lost her daughter Kyoko (second ex-husband Cox kidnapped Kyoko in 1971 & hid her with an alias name Rosemary in the cult The Walk) for 27 years. Finally in 1998, Yoko and Kyoko reunited. John and Yoko were together 24/7 for six years until their fifteen-month break in 1973-74. Back together again, they sustained attacks from the media, politicians and all kinds of harassment. John and Yoko created art, music & had a son, Sean Lennon, on Wednesday, October 9th, 1975. They nourished each other's artistic nature with enough humor to survive through almost everything. Until Yoko Ono became a widow!- Actress
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At just 18, Nancy Kwan was studying dance with England's Royal Ballet School, when she was spotted by producer Ray Stark, who tested her and gave her the starring role of a free-spirited Hong Kong prostitute who captivates artist William Holden in The World of Suzie Wong (1960). She followed it the next year with the hit musical, Flower Drum Song (1961), and became one of Hollywood's most visible Asian actresses. Born in China to a Chinese father and British mother, Kwan spent the 1960s commuting between film roles in America and Europe (including the pilot for Hawaii Five-O (1968)), but faded from view in the West, when she returned to her native Hong Kong in 1972 to be with her critically ill father. Divorced from her second husband, screenwriter David Giler, and with a young son from her first marriage to Austrian hotelier Peter Pock, Kwan intended to stay a year, but wound up staying a decade.
As managing director of her own production company, she produced and directed dozens of commercials for the Southeast Asia market. She also acted in a spate of films made for Southeast Asian audiences, including "Fear" (1977) (aka Night Creature (1978)), which introduced her to filmmaker Norbert Meisel, who became her third husband. They returned to the US in 1979 so that her teenage son, Bernie Pock, could complete his education. He was a martial-arts master, fluent in Chinese, and became a stunt coordinator and actor before his untimely death.
After returning to the US, Kwan appeared in numerous TV series, the NBC miniseries, Noble House (1988), and the CBS made-for-TV movie, Miracle Landing (1990). She's politically active as the spokeswoman for the Asian-American Voters Coalition, and touts a beauty product, Oriental Pearl Cream, in TV spots. Kwan was at the ceremonies in Los Angeles at Hollywood Park, where the Asian community gathered to watch the handover of Hong Kong to the government of China.- Akiko Wakabayashi was born on August 26, 1941 in Tokyo, Japan. During her work in movies, she became one of Japan's most popular actresses of their cinema's "Golden Age", ranking with actresses Kumi Mizuno and Mie Hama. One of her first films was Akiko (1961), which was named after her. Interestingly, the movie title shares both her real and character names. Her career took off when she came to Toho Studios, appearing in a host of sci-fi films, including that of the sexy gangster moll in Dogora (1964) and the bewitching alien-possessed princess in Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964). However, in the Western Cinema, she is probably best-known for her role as Bond girl "Aki" in the 007 epic, You Only Live Twice (1967), appearing alongside actor Sean Connery. When production of the 007 film began, Wakabayashi was originally chosen to play Bond girl "Kissy Suzuki" and her co-star, Mie Hama, is to play Bond girl "Suki". As Hama had a difficult time mastering the English language, the two actresses switched roles. In addition, Wakabayashi suggested her character name be Aki instead of Suki.
In the late 1960s to early 1970s, Japan's movie industry experienced an economic slump, which resulted in severe budget cuts. During that time, Wakabayashi made a rather abrupt end to her acting career, and has never been seen on the big screen since. Whether or not the economic slump played a factor, Wakabayashi remains one of the most memorable actresses of Japan, especially to Toho Studios' sci-fi fandom. - Actress
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Helen Funai was born on 25 January 1943 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She is an actress and producer, known for The Colbys (1985), Our Man Flint (1966) and My Three Sons (1960). She was previously married to Harry Eugene Erickson Jr..- Mie Hama was born in Tokyo, Japan on November 20, 1943 in a blue-collar Tokyo family whose small cardboard factory burned down in World War II. She grew up poor. She first started out working as a bus fare collector. While working, she was spotted by producer Tomoyuki Tanaka when she was only sixteen years old, and was soon employed at Toho Studios. She appeared in a bevy of drama and sci-fi films, including King Kong vs. Godzilla (1963), where she became the Giant Ape's "Damsel in Distress." She is probably best known in Western Cinema as Bond girl Kissy Suzuki, starring alongside actor Sean Connery in the 007 film You Only Live Twice (1967). That same year, King Kong Escapes (1967) was released, thus, she portrayed the spellbinding "Bond-girlish" villainess Madamn Piranha. Her extended wardrobe and enchanted bed chambers contributed to the film's "James Bond-ish" atmosphere. In addition, Hama would sometimes be referred to as "Funny Face," due to her appearances in Japan's "Crazy Cats" movies.
She became one of the most popular actresses in Japan's "Golden Age" of Cinema, but has done little acting when Japan's cinema world experienced severe financial problems. However, she did return to appear in a few films in the 1970s and 1980s, and she is seen, most recently, working as an active environmentalist, radio and television talk show host. She also married a television executive with whom she has four children. - Actress
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Lovely, slender, and sensuous raven-haired knockout Laurette Marcia Gemser was born on October 5, 1950 in Java, Indonesia. In 1955 Gemser left Indonesia at age four and moved with her parents to the Netherlands. Laura grew up in the Dutch city of Utrecht and attended Mulo Regentesseschool high school. She studied fashion design at the Artibus Art School in Utrecht. Gemser first gained public recognition with her nude modeling in various men's magazines in Belgium and the Netherlands. The exotic dark-haired beauty moved to Italy in the mid-1970's and made her film debut as Janine in the obscure Amore libero - Free Love (1974). However, it was Laura's small, but memorable role as a masseuse in Emmanuelle II (1975) that really launched her career in racy soft-core exploitation fare. Gemser achieved her greatest enduring international cult popularity with her incredibly erotic and uninhibited portrayals of the titular hedonistic and sexually adventurous globe-trotting photojournalist in the steamy "Black Emanuelle" series that were often directed by the notorious Joe D'Amato and frequently co-starred Gemser's real-life actor husband Gabriele Tinti. Other notable parts include charismatic cult leader the Divine One in Divine Emanuelle (1981), evil sorceress Indun in Ator, the Fighting Eagle (1982), and compassionate mutant telepath Lilith in Endgame - Bronx lotta finale (1983). Outside of acting, Laura also worked on a handful of movies as a costume designer. Gemser quit the motion picture business in the early 1990's and still lives in Italy.- Actress
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Born into a family of doctors and educated in China at the Shanghai Film Academy and the Shanghai Institute of Foreign Languages, Joan Chen was discovered by veteran Chinese director Jin Xie while observing a filming with a school group. Her performance in Xiao hua (1979) (A.K.A. "The Little Flower") won China's Best Actress award, and resulted in the Chinese press dubbing her "The Elizabeth Taylor of China" for having achieved top stardom while still in her teen years. She came to the U.S. to attend college in 1981, first at the State University of New York at New Paltz, later at California State University at Northridge. She a succession of small parts in movies and T.V., with her first break coming in 1986 when, in true Hollywood legend, producer Dino De Laurentiis noticed her in the parking lot of Lorimar Studios and cast her in Tai-Pan (1986). The film bombed, but it led to her being cast as the ill-fated Empress in Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor (1987), which won critical acclaim. This, and her role as enigmatic mill owner Josie Packard in the cult TV series Twin Peaks (1990), are her best-known roles in Europe and North America. However, Hollywood's practice of type-casting East Asians has led to a dearth of major roles for Chen since then, and in recent roles, she has often been cast as a villainess.
After taking a few years off to start a family, Joan returned to the screen in important supporting roles playing women in early middle age, such as the mother of a principle adult character. As a result, her career is flourishing again on both sides of the Pacific. Her two directing efforts were well-received critically, and in a 2008 interview she revealed she planned to direct again but was putting that off until her daughters were grown, since directing took her away from them too much, whereas acting could be done on a part-time basis.- Actress
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Tia Carrere, born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, was discovered in a grocery store and landed the female lead in the film Aloha Summer. She then moved to Los Angeles and continued her ascent in the acting world as a series regular on General Hospital as well as a string of guest starring roles on MacGyver, Quantum Leap, Married With Children, and Friday the 13th among others. With her iconic breakthrough role as Cassandra in Wayne's World and Wayne's World 2, Tia was able to showcase both her considerable singing as well as acting chops. Wayne's World was a worldwide phenom and set the stage for the femme fatale role of Juno Skinner in James Cameron's film True Lies, opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger; the computer whiz Jingo Asakuma in Rising Sun opposite Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes; and her very own series lead as Sydney Fox in Relic Hunter. Other work includes Nip/Tuck, In Plain Sight, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and many more. Subsequently Tia returned to her Hawaii roots starring in Disney's animated film Lilo & Stitch, while on the musical front, being nominated four times and winning the Grammy twice with her records 'ikena and Huana Ke Aloha. She also co-hosted and performed during the ceremony. Lately, Tia can be seen in Michael Patrick King's series AJ & the Queen starring RuPaul, Amblin Films "Easter Sunday" starring JoKoy and Mindy Kaling's Never Have I Ever. She also just released a single and video of a song she wrote called "I'm Still Here".2 January 1967- Actress
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Born to immigrants in New York City, Lucy Liu has always tried to balance an interest in her cultural heritage with a desire to move beyond a strictly Asian-American experience. Her mother, Cecilia, a biochemist, is from Beijing & her father, Tom Liu, a civil engineer, is from Shanghai. Once relegated to "ethnic" parts, the energetic actress is finally earning her stripes as an across-the-board leading lady.
She graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1986 & enrolled in NYU. However, she was discouraged by the dark and sarcastic atmosphere, so she transferred to the University of Michigan after her freshman year. She graduated w/ a degree in Asian Languages & Cultures, managing to squeeze in some additional training in dance, voice, fine arts & acting. During her senior year, she auditioned for a small part in a production of Alice in Wonderland and walked away with the lead. Encouraged by the experience, she decided to take the plunge into professional acting. She moved to L.A., splitting her time between auditions & food service day jobs. She eventually scored a guest appearance as a waitress on Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990). That performance led to more walk-on parts in shows like NYPD Blue (1993), ER (1994) & The X-Files (1993). In 1996, she was cast as an ambitious college student on Rhea Perlman's ephemeral sitcom Pearl (1996).
She first appeared on the big screen as an ex-girlfriend in Jerry Maguire (1996) (she had previously filmed a scene in the indie Bang (1995), but it was shelved for 2 years). She then waded through a series of supporting parts in small films before landing her big break on Ally McBeal (1997). She initially auditioned for the role of Nelle Porter, which went to Portia de Rossi. However, writer-producer David E. Kelley was so impressed w/ her that he promised to write a part for her in an upcoming episode. The part turned out to be that of growling, ill-tempered lawyer Ling Woo, which she filled w/ such aplomb that she was signed on as a regular cast member.
The "Ally" win gave her film career a much-needed boost-in 1999, she was cast as a dominatrix in the Mel Gibson action flick Payback (1999) & as a hitchhiker in the ill-received boxing saga Play It to the Bone (1999). The following year brought even larger roles: first as the kidnapped Princess Pei Pei in Jackie Chan's western Shanghai Noon (2000), then as one-third of the comely crime-fighting trio in Charlie's Angels (2000).
When she's not hissing at clients or throwing well-coiffed punches, she keeps busy w/ an eclectic mix of off-screen hobbies. She practices the martial art of Kali-Eskrima-Silat (knife-and-stick fighting), skis, rock climbs, rides horses &plays the accordion. In 1993, she exhibited a collection of multimedia art pieces at the Cast Iron Gallery in SoHo (New York), after which she won a grant to study & create art in China. Her hectic schedule doesn't leave much time for romantic intrigue, but she says she prefers to keep that side of her life uncluttered.- Hazel Mae was born on 7 April 1970 in Tagbilaran City, Bohol, Philippines.
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Minka was born on September 7, 1970 in Seoul, South Korea. Of mixed French and Vietnamese descent, Minka attended college in South Korea and became a highly adept tennis player. Following graduation from college, Minka immigrated to America in 1993 so she could compete in the Asian Olympics in Chicago, Illinois (she won the Gold Model in women's doubles). Unable to pursue a career as a professional tennis instructor due to her poor command of the English language, Minka instead decided to concentrate on modeling and eventually sent a portfolio of her work to British adult photographer and film director John Graham. Minka then went to England to meet Graham and subsequently launch a career as a nude model. Among the men's magazines Minka has posed for pictorials in are Score, Gent, D-Cup, and Hustler's Busty Beauties. Minka returned to the United States in 1994 and did her first hardcore movie in 1995; she has appeared in a handful of X-rated features for such notable companies as VSP, Vivid, Score, Bizarre Video, Sunshine Films, Starr Productions, and Big Top Video. Minka was named Score Model of the Year in 2005 and was inducted into the Erotica Hall of Fame in 2007.- Actress
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Sandra Oh was born to Korean parents in the Ottawa suburb of Nepean, Ontario, Canada. Her father, Oh Junsu, a businessman, and her mother, Oh Young-Nam, a biochemist, were married in Seoul, Korea. They both attended graduate school at the University of Toronto. Sandra began her career as a ballet dancer and eventually studied drama at the National Theatre School in Montreal. She then starred in a London (Ontario) stage production of David Mamet's "Oleanna" and appeared as the title character in the Canadian television production The Diary of Evelyn Lau (1994), beating out over 1,000 applicants. Her list of awards includes the FIPA d'Or for Best Actress at the 1994 Festival International de Programmes Audiovisuels at Cannes, France, two Genie Awards (the Canadian Oscar), a Cable Ace Award, a Theatre World Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. In 2003, she married writer-director Alexander Payne and their first film together was the Oscar-winning Sideways (2004).- Actress
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Asia Carrera's stunning curves can be seen in more than 250 hardcore movies. Her looks combine delicate Asian features with voluptuous silicone breasts. Her fans not only admire her mouth-watering body but also her brains--a self-taught web designer, she is also a member of MENSA.
At the tender age of 13 this daughter of a Japanese father and a German mother was already playing music by Johann Sebastian Bach on the piano in Carnegie Hall. Thanks to a federal grant she was able to study Japanese language and Economics at New Jersey's Rutgers University, but this was only after she had run away from home as a teenager because of the pressure her demanding parents put on her. By the age of 17 she was homeless. To get through her studies at the university she turned to stripping. After becoming one of New Jersey's best-paid exotic dancers she decided to devote her life to getting richer and richer; she never wanted to live out on the street again. When she heard about girls making thousands of dollars in the porn biz, she moved to Los Angeles. A mutual friend introduced her to director Bud Lee, who instantly put her in one of his feature films. The rest, as they say, is history.
Asia has retired from making adult movies and only returns to do the occasional big-budget flick. She runs her own website and spends her time chatting with fans via email or day trading shares on the stock exchange.- Lena Fukiishi is known for A Married Woman Who Was Exhibited in a Museum for the Sake of Her Beloved Family: Lena Fukiishi (2016).(a/k/a Rena Fukiishi) 7 July 1980
- Beti Hana was born on 26 February 1983 in South Korea. She is an actress.
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Small (just under 5'2"), but buxom and shapely brunette Asa Akira was born Asa Takigami on January 3, 1985 in New York City. The only child of Japanese parents, Akira lived in Japan between the ages of six and thirteen. Asa attended Washington Irving High School in New York City from 2001 to 2002 and graduated high school in 2004. She was a regular on the radio show "Bubba the Love Sponge" for about a year.
Asa began performing in X-rated movies at age twenty in 2006. She has several tattoos. Akira has been nominated for several AVN Awards in such categories as Best Actress and Best New Starlet. She lives in Los Angeles, California.- Hitomi Tanaka was born on 18 July 1986 in Kumamoto, Japan. She is an actress, known for Gokuraku Sento Busty Hot Water Momi (2011) and Dosukebe kensa: Nurse bakunyû-zeme (2012).
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Nora Lum, known professionally as Awkwafina, is an American actress and rapper. She has played supporting roles in the comedy films Ocean's 8 and Crazy Rich Asians (2018), and her leading role in the comedy-drama The Farewell (2019) earned her a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress nomination.
She has released two albums, Yellow Ranger (2014) and In Fina We Trust (2018). She has also ventured into comedy and hosting, making television appearances in Girl Code, Future Man, and Saturday Night Live.
Lum was born in New York City to painter and South Korean immigrant Tia, who died when she was four, and Chinese-American father Wally. She grew up in Forest Hills, Queens, raised by her father and his grandparents; she became especially close to her grandmother. One of her paternal great-grandfathers was a Chinese immigrant in the 1940s; he opened the Cantonese restaurant Lum's in Flushing, Queens that was one of that neighborhood's first Chinese restaurants.
Lum attended LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts where she played the trumpet and was trained in classical music and jazz. At age 16, she adopted the stage name Awkwafina, "definitely a person I repressed" and an alter ego to her "quiet and more passive" personality during her college years. Lum majored in journalism and women's studies at the University at Albany, State University of New York. From 2006 to 2008, Lum attended Beijing Language and Culture University in China, where she studied Mandarin.
Lum states that Charles Bukowski, Anaïs Nin, Joan Didion, Tom Waits, and Chet Baker were early influences. Prior to her career in entertainment, she was an intern at local New York publications Gotham Gazette and the Times Union newspaper in Albany, and was a publicity assistant for publishing house Rodale.- Jade Kush is a busty Asian performer who officially entered the adult industry in 2017. Growing up in Chicago, she attended an art school where she focused on oil painting. After graduating, she started dabbling in webcamming. A scout for LA Direct Models actually discovered her camming and signed her shortly afterwards. Jade Kush broke into the business at 19, making an impressive impact on the business working with companies like Jules Jordan, Hustler, and Girlfriends Films. Jade can be seen doing boy/girl titles, lesbian, facial, creampie, and solo masturbation-themed films. In 2020, Jade walked the runway during NY Fashion Week for Berlin-based brand, Namilia.