Terry Chen: At War with the Stereotypes

By Andrew Chung

It's a sun-drenched breezy spring morning in downtown Vancouver. A man saunters into a coffee shop in the heart of upscale Yaletown. He wears a red and blue headband around his tousled sleek hair, dark aviator sunglasses, a simple casual tee, cargo shorts and sneakers. With an immediate air of affability, he turns and beams mannerly, extending his hand with a humble self-assuredness. You offer him a coffee, but he accepts only on the condition that you join him, even if this meeting was at your request.

This is the picture of actor Terry Chen, rising Asian-Canadian star, who's worked with the likes of Ann-Margret, Dennis Hopper, and Jet Li. His easygoing nature is what some may call stereotypically West Coast, where he indeed resides.

But as the picture suggests, Chen couldn't be any further from a stereotype.

Born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta, Chen was never the Asian male cliché that we've grown to see and believe in today's western media. In fact, he defies it. If you were to throw all the predictable Asian male stereotypes at Chen, none of them would stick. Timid, uptight, geeky, buck-toothed, emasculated, and socially inept? Chen is none of these. Instead, he represents the polar opposite of all of the above.

Currently living in Vancouver and periodically in Los Angeles, Chen flies through life by the seat of his pants. "I'd go into the [audition] room, make a jackass out of myself, learn from that, and then go on to the next one. That's kind of the way I've always gotten along in life. There ain't nothing to it, but to do it."

In 1992, at the tender age of 17, Chen moved from Edmonton to the Cayman Islands and got into the nightclub business. He worked at clubs for five years before getting what he calls "island fever." He was determined not to become like those around him, who were in their 40s and spent their entire career in the service industry.

"I sat myself on the beach one day and just took a retrospective of my life. I looked at what I loved to do in school, and it was always drama. At that point I left the Cayman Islands to come back to Canada. It was just a series of very serendipitous events where I met up with a friend from high school in Calgary who had an agent. His agent was based out of Vancouver, so I signed with them."

His agent eventually got Chen his first big gig in Romeo Must Die. He subsequently booked his first prominent role as Ben Fong-Torres, playing the real-life former editor of Rolling Stone, in Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous. That qualified as his first big break in the acting realm. Since then he has appeared in Battlestar Galactica, Snakes on a Plane, War with Jet Li and Jason Statham, and most recently They Wait with Jaime King, a supernatural horror flick that played at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival.

But none of it came easy. Chen has been acting for about eight years now. "We go out and audition four or five times a week, and you get rejected four or five times a week. It's pretty disheartening."

"I always think of my last job as my last job, which is how I've been trained. I don't want to just rest on my laurels. I know that it's a tough business, especially for ethnic minorities," Chen says.

"A lot of parts and roles in the United States come down to numbers and marketing. It's what people are used to down there. Unfortunately, it is stereotypes."

Chen believes that Hollywood has created a certain unflattering image of the Asian male. "It's a deluded, stereotypical, bullshit image," he puts it bluntly.

But that isn't to say that Hollywood executives are entirely responsible for that image. "No excuses. We have to change that image. And I'm not taking on any responsibility, saying that I want to change people's image of the North American Asian man in film and television. But at the same time I think that I can affect that image by every part that I play and by what I bring to that role."

"Everybody in their right mind knows that Asians, or any ethnic minorities, have a lot more to offer than what their stereotype brings. Now changing the minds of producers and Hollywood requires bringing more Asians into the mainstream, and not making them the nerdy geek or the Kung Fu artist or whatever it is, to the forefront. There's a multitude of talented Asian actors and actresses that are doing a lot of stuff. That being said, is it enough? No. Can we do better? Yes."

Chen feels it will only take one major star for the stereotypes to significantly change. "It'll take a Lucy Liu to do what she has done and then a male counterpart of Lucy Liu to come through as a sex symbol without doing the martial arts thing. Then people will widen their perspective. It only takes one really. Bruce Lee was one guy who affected people with his persona and the way he brought his energy out."

But how much can one actor do when pressured to take certain roles to survive? Chen recalls a character he once played, called Johnny Tigerclaw.

"I had to play a nerdy Asian kid, who was into comic books, and I had a thick accent. I didn't want to go in to read for it. But I went in and booked the role. And I made fun of the stereotype. I did it over the top. And it helped me get over my own insecurity about, 'Oh, what are people going to perceive me as?' If we take things too seriously then they do come off serious. There's always going to be negative roles. We can't avoid them."

Neither can other ethnic groups because of typecasting. "We have elements to battle, as does everybody in this business, even if you're a Caucasian you have a million other people competing for the same roles, as with Asians, Blacks, and Hispanics as well."

And even though Johnny Tigerclaw was a role that made Chen uncomfortable, he feels it isn't his place to criticize the roles he takes or the projects that he's a part of. "There's a lot of bad television out there. There're a lot of bad movies, but in the end it's all work. If you talk to any Asian actor in Canada and the States, or anybody who wants to just survive in the entertainment industry, they just want to work. So whether it be good or bad, if you bitch about the bad stuff, go write good stuff. Be proactive."

If Chen were to give the next generation of Asians making their way into the entertainment industry any advice, it'd be patience. "Have a lot of patience and perseverance. Don't let anyone pigeonhole you. If you have a dream, if you have a passion in this business, follow it... There's a lot of rejection in the business. You got to have a thick skin, but you got to focus on the positive."

And it's focusing on the positive that will encourage others to create positive change. Chen says a number of things have to happen: "The writing needs to get better. Casting directors, directors and producers, need to broaden their view on what a male lead should be. And it's also based on the audience. Audiences have to be willing to go watch ethnic minorities in lead roles. That's not going to change overnight. I think it's a great thing that we have a lot of African-Americans now taking the lead, and winning Academy Awards. That's been a long time coming and long overdue."

Despite the hardships and misconceptions of Asians in the media today, at the end of it all, Chen is one of the prime examples that the Asian man isn't being portrayed the same as it was decades ago. From playing the horny ex-boyfriend of the Caucasian female lead in ABC's comedy, Big Day, to playing the husband of Jaime King in the recently wrapped, They Wait, the Asian male is slowly becoming the desirable or sexualized human being that they're capable of being. And this is in addition to other recent Asian male incarnations such as the teenage troublemakers in Justin Lin's Better Luck Tomorrow, or the depraved Sam Kim in Michael Kang's The Motel.

As Chen ambles out of the Yaletown hotspot and graciously thanks me for the coffee, much like he came in, one thing becomes clear. With his bright burgeoning acting career ahead of him, he will continue to play his part, so to speak.