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Victor Wong
Heavy-lidded Chinese-American character actor who brought his slightly puffy features and an assured, amiable playing style to a series of wizened film roles in the 1980s and 90s. Born in San Francisco's Chinatown to immigrant parents, Wong went to college originally intending to follow in his father's footsteps and enter politics, possibly back in China. When China became Communist, though, he moved back to San Francisco and fell in with the "Beat" movement of the early 60s. (He was one of Ken Kesey's "Merry Pranksters" and Jack Kerouac even wrote about Wong in "Big Sun.") Wong later became one of TV's first Chinese-American reporters when he worked for PBS Channel 9 from 1968 to 1974. A bout with the face-paralyzing Bell's palsy made him leave TV, though, and he went into stage acting instead.