Stephanie Hsu says she once fought her love of art. The actress is now making waves in Hollywood.
Stephanie Hsu, the breakout star known for her role in "Everything Everywhere All at Once," has been making waves in Hollywood — even described as Hollywood's new "It" girl.
She hopes to tackle producing and directing next. But she never thought the life she is now living was possible.
"And so the deeper work actually is going within myself and untangling all those knots. ... It's kind of finding the courage to actually be in your full bloom, as it were," she said.
If she could could speak to her younger self, she would say, "it's okay to love art."
"I think I fought it for a really long time because I didn't know if it was actually something that was possible for me, really," Hsu said. "And I look back now and I wish I just allowed myself to love it sooner."
Hsu fell in love with acting when she was 6, but didn't see it as a possible career path.
"We just didn't see a lot of ourselves onscreen growing up," she said. "So I never really thought of it as a actual career trajectory. ... In some ways I like to joke that it set me up for a lot of success, actually, because my standards were very low."
Born outside of Los Angeles and raised by a single mom from Taiwan, Hsu said being a part of a marginalized group made her feel the need to be "extra excellent" to be able to "have a seat at the table."
But with acting, she faced some pushback. When she told her mom she dreamed of becoming an actress, her mother was skeptical and wanted Hsu to study business.
When Hsu began her acting career, she started in experimental theater and later originated the role of Karen the Computer in "SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical." She gained further recognition for her supporting role in "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" before earning an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role in "Everything Everywhere All at Once," which won best picture at the 95th Academy Awards in March.
Michelle Yeoh became the first actress of Southeast Asian descent to win the Academy Award for Best Actress — for her role in the film.
"That night we made history," Hsu said. "And I feel like for the first time, the Asian community and the Asian community within the film industry was truly solidified and woven into the quilt of cinema history."
Hsu takes on a different role in the R-rated comedy "Joy Ride," which tells the story of a woman's humorous yet heartfelt journey as she searches for her birth mother in China.
"Joy Ride," which will be in theaters Friday, not only has four Asian-American leads. Asian-American women also wrote and directed it — representation that Hsu said made her feel "safe."
"I like to say we knew we weren't gonna be the butt of any joke. We were just four butts and four jokes," she said, laughing.
"Sometimes you walk into spaces ... if you don't know that your creatives have a shared experience, sometimes on accident, even, things that are not meant to be offensive can be quite harmful," she said.