|
Vancouver Sun
Vancouver's Grace Park racks up many firsts with
her latest role Vancouver-based actor Grace Park politely bites back frustration. A reporter is once again asking her about ethnicity and its role in her career. "I don't feel typecast almost at all," said Park, who is best known for her role as various Number Eight Cylons in Battlestar Galactica, "and it could just be because I'm insensitive, but I doubt it. I think most of my roles I've gotten have very little to do with my ethnicity. I don't feel that's a limiting factor for my career." Park is in town for the Vancouver Asian Film Festival and a screening of West 32nd, a crime drama set on West 32nd, the centre of Manhattan's Korean town. John Cho of Harold and Kumar fame plays a lawyer defending a 14-year-old boy facing a first-degree murder charge. Park plays the boy's sister, Lila Lee. "She's a pretty smart kid who got into a good school," Park said. "Partly related to the trouble her family is experiences with her brother, she had to drop out of school. She's a girl not used to this entire world and what's happening to her entire family. She might seem really sweet, but at the same time, you'll see just what people are willing to do for family and not bat an eye at all. It's a story about loss of innocence and cuts a swath through the Korean American identity." West 32nd represents a number of firsts for Park. "It's my first feature, my first gig in New York, my first independent," Park said. "A lot of firsts for me. Also the fact that we were doing a film that has an element of Korean-ness to it." "John Cho's character is totally whitewashed," she said. "He's the banana. Lila is right in the middle. She can mix in either world." Park herself definitely resides in the North American world. "I don't even hang out with Korean Americans," she said. "I had to really learn my Korean. Because my accent was really bad, apparently. I thought it was fine." "I was not very aware of [ethnic issues in film] at all a few years ago until there was more press coverage from specific media outlets. Asian American magazines keep asking me these questions more and more. It's always kind of a surprise to me. Why are you asking me? . . . You grow up in a country where nobody cares what race you are. It's almost like growing up in a little village where it doesn't matter, then going into Los Angeles. It could be my own ignorance. Could be I was sheltered in Vancouver." Park has managed to cross career boundaries that other Asian actors seem to face. "I've certainly been very blessed," she said. "I can only say that I worked very hard in class and on set doing the best that I can at the moment. I was incredibly blessed with Battlestar. . . . I tried to work my little butt off just to keep up with everybody else and not too many people kicked me." "I don't know what it is about me that gets cast in specific roles," she said. "Some people would say, 'You're just a pretty face,' but on Battlestar, I'm not looking pretty every day. I'm pretty banged up." She works hard to constantly improve her acting skills. "Whenever any good teachers come into Vancouver, I try to sit in a class," she said. "If I could have Battlestar now, then it would be different," said Park who started with the show in 2003. "I think I would be much more free with my expression of myself within the characters. I wouldn't be so afraid. I wouldn't be so reticent and tentative." Park has had a busy year. She's just finished a seven-month stint in which she filmed Battlestar in Vancouver, went to Los Angeles for The Cleaner and Toronto for The Border. "Vancouver and L.A. were happening simultaneously," she said. "I got some elite member status at a few airlines." Now she's going to take a well-deserved break until The Cleaner begins pre-production in January. |