Here’s our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity:

First, can you tell me a bit about how you got into acting?

I was in junior high school — at Audubon Junior High School. I was put into a drama class in eighth grade.

I wrote it down because I had to fill out a third elective. I stayed in it and I loved it.

By the time I graduated from junior high, I had been in about six full shows — “Flower Drum Song,” “Bells Are Ringing” — big, big musicals.

The thing was, the first show I did was “Flower Drum Song,” and my “mother” was Hispanic, my “father” was black, my “aunt” was white, my “girlfriend” was Asian, but it all seemed normal to me.

What about in college?

When I was in school, I thought I was going to be a dentist or something, you know, very Asian responsible — like a good, solid job.

Then between my sophomore and junior year, I got cast in “Farewell to Manzanar,” which at the time was a really big NBC movie of the week, and all of a sudden, I was getting paid to work with these professional actors.

Eventually I went to U.C.L.A. and graduated with a degree in theater. So at the age of 20 was when I first started acting professionally, and I’ve been very fortunate in that for about the last 44 years, it’s all I’ve really done.

I’m guessing the kinds of parts you were going out for in the beginning were written specifically for Asian men, and you may have been asked to do an accent or play to a stereotype. How did you feel about roles like that?