Lee declines to
divulge how much money he makes now that he's - by all accounts - "moving
up" in the Hollywood world. "I hate talking about the business
end - but I like talking about life," he says, offering a taste
of the apple butter spread he's applying to a roll. "Acting? What
is acting? It's about life," he says, adding he came to this realization
about a year ago, after wrapping up The Fast and the Furious.
With APA actors,
"they tend to focus so much on getting that job, because there's
not that much. They lose sight of the work, of the craft, of why you
actually do it," Lee explains. "Then it all becomes so product-oriented,
you know? 'What can I do to make this casting director hire me?'...The
major thing is to retain yourself, because you'll get here and you'll
try to mold yourself to what's 'in,' not realizing that what's going
to make you is who you are. Period."
Lee knows this from
experience. When he first moved to Los Angeles 10 years ago, he changed
his "acting" name to Reggie Lee. Actually, it's Reginald Valdez,
but the non-"Asian"-sounding surname kept throwing off casting
directors who would call him in for Hispanic roles. Lee also bulked
up on muscle-building supplements - until a director told him he was
getting too big.
Perhaps he was overcompensating
for his scrawniness as a kid growing up in the suburbs of Cleveland,
where Lee, then 16, caught onto the craft after watching a made-for-TV
movie. "Timothy Bottoms was this coach of a football team and got
some kind of disease, and he couldn't walk anymore," Lee reminisces.
"I was bawlin' like a banshee. I thought, if something could move
me that much, that was what I wanted to do." After that, Lee's
parents would grudgingly drive him to acting lessons and auditions.
He played the miller in a children's production of Rumplestiltskin,
then landed the role of Schroeder in You're a Good Man, Charlie
Brown. As one of a handful of APA students at his all-male Catholic
high school ("There were times when I was a kid when people would
make fun of me because I was Asian," he admits), acting in plays
became an easy way to fit in.
Lee's parents, who
had wanted him to become a doctor, "would tell me it's a great
hobby. 'What a fine hobby,'" Lee recalls. "It truly was a
battle, from the moment when I told them I wanted to be an actor...
But my parents are amazing. And they learned. They know something very
different now."
For example, on
a recent trip with his parents to San Diego, the 28-year-old actor caught
the glance of two teenagers "who looked like theyÌd be the popular
kids in school," Lee says. "After two hours of eating, the
kids' mother goes, 'Are you the guy from The Fast and the Furious?
Because my kids have been so nervous to ask for an autograph.'"
He's gotten the same recognition and reverence elsewhere - though he
had just eight scenes and maybe two speaking lines in the entire film.
"I went from
someone who was made fun of, and now these people are coming up and
recognizing me," Lee says. "That's how we can change - not
just how Asian Americans are portrayed in film, but how Asian Americans
are portrayed." He's also challenging cultural taboos, with critical
acclaim for his leading role as a struggling gay screenwriter who breaks
up with his boyfriend in Drift, an independent film by APA
director Quentin Lee. ("It's [Reggie] Lee's sterling performance
that rivets,"LA Weekly proclaimed in a recent review.)
Next, he's starring in a "structured improvisational" project
entitled Living Desperately following a similar formula to
the acclaimed 1996 film Secrets and Lies.
"It's part
of the ripple effect," he says about what's happening with APA
inclusion across all media. "You're part of that. I think we all
are."
Reggie Lee can speak to that point. But while he agrees that it's important
for APAs to want to change the culture of Hollywood, that's not the kind
of thinking that's going to turn them into stars who can actually do that,
says the Filipino-born actor who starred alongside Rick Yune as an Asian
gangster in 2001's The Fast and the Furious. Lee cringes at my
initial suggestion of lunch at Roscoe's House of Chicken and Waffles -
a greasy spoon in the heart of Hollywood (emphasis on greasy) - and opts
instead for "healthier" fare at a spotless restaurant with lush
indoor foliage called The Good Earth in Studio City.