To celebrate another John Cho leading man gig (FINALLY!) in Searching, due in theaters tomorrow, I thought we'd do a "posterized". But then I quickly discovered that though he's made more than 40 movies (which is a lot of posters to collect considering his face is only on a few of them!). The first time I personally remember seeing him was in Justin Lin's Asian-American high school crime movie Better Luck Tomorrow (2002) but Cho wasn't famous until Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004) opened. Sadly, he's barely in many of the movies on his filmography, often shoved to the periphery, or used sparingly, the filmmaking teams trusting in his considerable charisma to make small roles pop. Even the new Star Trek films don't really make as much of his Sulu as they could. So today a Beauty Break for this actor Hollywood hasn't quite done right by.
Here's some Cho for your eye candy pleasure...
Perhaps the success of Crazy Rich Asians will make Hollywood executives realize that they already have a plethora of talented 'name' Asian-American or English speaking actors that they're totally underusing. Here's a partial list of undercast Asian hunks that AREN'T in Crazy Rich Asians or aren't named Dev Patel or Riz Ahmed (the two that seem to be doing really well at the moment, both of them British and South Asian) who Hollywood should totally cast in things (in no particular order):
- Hayden Szeto (The Edge of Seventeen, Truth or Dare)
- Ki Hong Lee (The Maze Runner, Kimmy Schmidt)
- Daniel Dae Kim (Hawaii Five-O)
- Lewis Tan (Iron Fist, Into the Badlands)
- Daniel Wu (Into the Badlands)
- Leonardo Nam (Westworld, The Fast and the Furious)
- Will Yun Lee (The Good Doctor)
- Godfrey Gao (The Mortal Instruments, The Jade Pendant)
- Raza Jaffrey (Homeland, Lost in Space)
- Rick Yune (Prison Break, Marco Polo)
- Steven Yeun (Burning, The Walking Dead)
Pair that deep talent pool (the women are even more plentiful) with all the not-yet-famous talent waiting to catch a break and think of the wonderment ahead of us if casting loosens up!