On one side of the world, Jonathan Kos-Read is a famous movie and television actor, where fans shout his name when they spy him and clamor for selfies and autographs.

On the other side, he’s just another guy on the street, another dad picking up his daughter from a local public school — unknown and inconspicuous.

In China, where he lived for nearly 20 years, he’s a celebrity. In Oakland, where he decided to settle with his family last year, he’s a relative nobody.

Both places suit him just fine.

“I live in Oakland. I work in China,” he said. “It’s a long commute.”

Kos-Read, 43, is the go-to white guy for Chinese soap operas, war movies, romantic comedies and even zombie flicks. He is, by some accounts, the most famous American actor in China, where he’s known as Cao Cao (pronounced tsau tsau), a name he chose in honor of a Han Dynasty warlord he admired.

He’s the quintessential character actor: the cheesy Russian lounge lizard named Dick, the free-spirited hip-hop dancer, the French mafia fashion designer. He’s been a lawyer named Mark who turns into a zombie in “Mojin: The Lost Legend” — a movie starring the Chinese equivalent of George Clooney, he said.

Finding his calling

Kos-Read is fluent in Mandarin but often speaks English in the roles, sometimes with French or Russian accents and with Chinese subtitles scrolling during his dialogue.

Born in Torrance (Los Angeles County), Kos-Read stumbled into the career in a postcollege quest for adventure and idiosyncrasy. “I had this image of myself living life like a character in a novel,” he said.

When he arrived in Beijing in 1997, after graduating with a degree in microbiology from New York University, he had little money in his pockets and no idea what he would do there. With one year of college Mandarin on his resume, he didn’t quite speak the language but was determined to learn. He thought he’d stay a couple of years.

“I just wanted to go do something interesting, and then I never left,” he said.

He taught English, tutored expat kids in biology and history, and interned at CNN. And he started paying attention to the white American actors in Chinese television shows and big-screen cinema. At some point he realized three things: They weren’t great actors, their Mandarin was terrible, and they weren’t very good-looking.

Losing to Tyson

Kos-Read had studied acting at NYU before switching to biology, his Mandarin was really good, and he wasn’t ugly — he figured he had them beat on all three fronts. And sure enough, he started getting roles not long after he decided to audition.

His family isn’t surprised by his career choice or his success at it. His father is a renowned geriatric psychiatrist and elder abuse expert witness. His mother is a prominent painter. His brother, Isaac Kos-Read, is the communications director of the Oakland Unified Schools and a competitive Cuban salsa dancer.

“We come with these two very different perspectives of life,” Isaac Kos-Read said. “There’s no doubt that my brother is a confident guy who’s really thought through what he wants out of life and how to go about getting it.”

Kos-Read didn’t, however, get the role he really wanted in his most recent film, “Ip Man 3,” part of a movie franchise about Bruce Lee’s martial arts teacher. Instead, he was cast as the corrupt British police officer, a part with noticeably fewer scenes than the other English-speaking role.

“I was a little miffed,” he said. “I went (to the set) with an attitude.”

Then he showed up and saw who beat him out: former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson. He figured he could live with the smaller role. And, he said, “Honestly, Mike Tyson was the nicest guy.”

Back home in Oakland, Kos-Read strolled through Chinatown one recent afternoon, chatting with wide-eyed shopkeepers more stunned by his fluent Mandarin than his role in the movies they carried on their shelves. After wandering for a while, he ducked into his favorite restaurant for a Mandarin hot pot meal, with floating jujubes (the fruit, not the candy), tofu, intestines and thinly sliced beef.

Despite the comfort food, Oakland’s Chinatown still seemed a bit foreign, he said. The culture and language there are more representative of the rural south rather than Beijing, where he lived, and Shanghai, where he often films.

Roles become more nuanced

Still, Oakland already is starting to feel like home for Kos-Read and for his wife, Gia Li, whom he met in China, and their two daughters, ages 9 and 3. His brother is here, and his parents are moving to the city as well. There’s a vibe in Oakland — of art, culture, change — that’s growing on him.

His career, though, will presumably stay rooted in China.

“I would love to do a movie here,” he said. “But I have a specific skill set — I can speak Chinese really well.”

With his language skills and his Hollywood good looks, he’s carved a deep niche in China’s film industry. He’s already scheduled to shoot three more films in the coming months.

Kos-Read has faced criticism for some of his roles, which reinforce stereotypes of the stupid American or the cocky French guy. The Japanese actors typically play the bad guys, he noted, a reflection of the often violent historical interactions between the two countries.

While he has turned down some roles, he’s also played his share of brash World War II American soldiers, dumb foreigners or hapless cohorts.

“As a minority actor, you run into this,” he said. “You can say, ‘I would never do anything like that,’ and then you never work.”

He’s noticed that as China has increasingly opened its borders to outsiders, the roles have started to shift. He’s not always just the arrogant American, for example, but complex characters that, while still foreign, are more than just a white-faced stereotype.

Case in point: In his next film — a “science fiction ‘Home Alone’ set in Beijing” — he plays a kidnapper with Hulk-like superhero powers. But he won’t be green.

“I’m like a purple Hulk,” he said.

Though the roles are improving, Kos-Read noted that he’s still cast as the non-Chinese sidekick rather than the leading man. He’s the character actor who never gets the girl.

Actually, that’s not entirely true.

“Sometimes I get the girl, but only under specific circumstances,” he said.

One, she’s a prostitute. Two, she lives the rest of her life in regret and opportunity lost. Three, she dies.

Oh, and one more, he said, laughing.

“She’s old.”

Jill Tucker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @jilltucker