In my experience, I've loved all races. It's not like I can only be with my people.
There's a misconception that I can't relate to the quote-unquote 'Asian-American experience' because I didn't grow up with an Asian mom and dad. And that's just not true. I am Asian American, and so playing a girl who is half Korean, half white, but her white dad tried really hard to connect with her mom's heritage - that's very familiar to me.
I think there's a misconception that all Asian-American experiences are the same. My experiences with my family and the way they wanted me to know my culture are not the same as others.
One time, I went bodysurfing in St. Bart's with a friend. The waves were so intense, and my body was just getting torn up by them. But it was so freeing... but also I'm never doing that again.
YA, I feel, is so accurate to what it is like be a teenager and the realities of being a teenager and being in love.
When you're the only woman of color, and you walk into a room of people who don't look like you, most of them with blond hair and blue eyes, it's disheartening. The weirdest part is that I walk in and assume they think I'm auditioning to play a different role than them, but I'm going out for their same role.
Casting directors will often say that they are open to any ethnicity, but they're not.
I wash my face with Boscia's charcoal cleanser because I think it cleanses really well. And then I spray my face with witch hazel.
I think screenwriters, I think editors in the cutting room - they have a lot of responsibility that we don't think about, but they could cut the coverage of an Asian person to focus on a white person because, unknowingly, they think that white person has more to say or is more interesting.
People in Hollywood defer to what they know, which is a white lead, particularly in romantic comedies.
When I am driving to an audition, I listen to the 'Hamilton: The Musical' soundtrack. It's super inspiring, but also, if I kind of sing-slash-rap along to it, it helps me with my pronunciation and dialect.
I have read the 'Divergent' series. I obviously read 'Harry Potter.'
A lot challenges me! Not psyching myself out, not doubting myself, not comparing myself to others... all of that challenges me. But inevitably, challenges are put into our lives so that we may grow and become the best version of who we are meant to be.
I was so in love with this boy in eighth grade. I really thought he was the one for me, and then he broke up with me because he said that I liked him more than he liked me, and I was living in N.Y. at the time, and I was on the subway just, like, truly heartbroken because when you're that age, you don't think you are ever going to recover.
Being an actor is hard. It's so true... auditioning is literally our full-time job, and then, if we are so lucky to book the project were auditioning for, then that project is our play.
I think that's very important, that a friend makes you laugh, and you're just giddy around them all the time.
Iron Man is my most favorite human, character, person in the world.
I have this big, old, oversize Levi's denim jacket, and I honestly think it might be for a dude. And on the back, it says, 'Catch feelings, not waves,' which I love because I'm very emotional.
I have written a lot of love letters to the people that I love in my life. It's sweet to be able to keep that, like a tangible letter, and I want to give that to people.
When you do action stuff and sci-fi stuff, you have a lot to hide behind - the hair and the makeup and the special effects. But when you play a normal girl, it's challenging because you have to trust yourself.
