Elizabeth Sung has appeared on TV in House, MD, Crossing Jordan, NYPD Blue, Touched by an Angel, ER, Charmed, Murder She Wrote, and The Equalizer as well as daytime dramas like The Young and The Restless and feature films like Joy Luck Club, Memoirs of a Geisha, Jet Li's Hero and Lethal Weapon 4.  She is a graduate of The Julliard School, who danced with the Alvin Ailey Dance Company, and is an award winning director, with a masters degree from The American Film Institute.

The interview takes place in my house near Studio City, California.  Elizabeth Sung enters the room gracefully.  Her features are delicate.  Her expression is modest and sincere.  She is a working actress who has appeared in dozens of the most popular shows on TV, and has  also appeared in what have been called the two "Big Asian Movies Made in America:" Joy Luck Club and Memoirs of a Geisha.   But Elizabeth is more than an actress.  She is a director, a screenwriter and a generous teacher, who is helping to train up the next generation of Asian American Actors at East West Players, the nation's premier Asian American theater organization.    While Elizabeth sits on the couch in my living room, her husband and co-screenwriter, Peter Tulipan, helps format my new Olympus digital recorder.  I thank Elizabeth for agreeing to be interviewed for the first issue of the magazine, and tell her how much I love "Joy Luck Club" and "Memoirs."  But first, before anything else, I must share with her what my husband, Bob McKenna, said when he read her bio:   "Wow!  She was in Lethal Weapon 4!"

My first question has to be:  "What was it like being on the set of Lethal Weapon 4?" Elizabeth answers: "The story line is about illegal immigrants from China arriving.  It was shot at the beach in San Pedro.  It was  an amazing location with a lot of logistics.  The production crew had to arrange for a navy ship to be there.  There were probably 150 people involved in that scene." "What is Mel Gibson really like?" I ask. Elizabeth laughs.  "He's really very friendly, very approachable.  I see that he's very open.  There's a little boy called 'Ping' in the movie.  I don't think the boy had a lot of acting experience. Mel was very good with him, making him feel comfortable.  In that aspect, he was not only a really wonderful actor and producer.  As a director, he knew how to make the boy feel relaxed. " "What about Danny Glover?" "I think he exudes a lot of warmth on the screen," she says, "and he's really like that in person." "How did you get a part in this blockbuster movie?" I ask. "I was very, very lucky!" Elizabeth replies.  "I was actually going to AFI (The American Film Institute) at that time.  I had gone into the office of a wonderful casting director.  When the movie was being cast, he and his assistant remembered that I was bilingual in Cantonese and English.  I had only one audition, I think."  "Is that how most actors get parts?" I ask.  "By knowing people?"  Elizabeth nods.  "The most important thing for any actor is to get out and meet people.  Talent is important, but not to have that (meeting people) in the equation is deadly."

I tell Elizabeth that one of our neighbors, whom Elizabeth has never met, pointed out her house to me and said: "The woman who lives there used to be on the soap opera, 'The Young and The Restless.'"   "Do people recognize you from that show, and come up to you?" I ask. Elizabeth laughs.  "I was shocked.  One time, on a trip to Italy with my husband and his family, we were lined up for the Vatican.  Out of nowhere, this man I didn't know came up to me and said, 'I just saw you on TV.'  I was so surprised.  I said: 'Out of all these people, you recognized me.  Thank you for watching the show.'" "What is it like shooting a soap?" I ask.

"I played Luan Abbot, the wife of Jack Abbott, one of the main characters on the show, played by Peter Bergman.  Peter is a very wonderful actor.  He was friendly and accessible.  I was a 'newbie,' and he'd been on the show a long time.  Yet, whenever I wanted to run lines with him, he was always there.  We'd run lines in the makeup room.  Because it's a daytime drama, we had to shoot a lot of pages every day." "Learning all those lines every day looks really hard to me," I say. "I think anybody can do it," Elizabeth replies.  "As you do it more and more, and have more episodes to practice on, you develop a way to manage it." "They don't hold up cue cards?" I ask. "Oh, of course, they do it for some actors, who have been on the show for a long time, but as  a 'newbie,' you have to know your lines.  You can't ask for cue cards or delay the show.  Most of my scenes were with Peter, and he was very good with his lines, and with Laura Lee Bell, the daughter of Bill Bell, the creator of the show, and she was also very good with her lines."

"What was it like being in Joy Luck Club?" "Up until that production, we didn't see a lot of Hollywood films with Asian and Asian American actresses and actors playing leading roles so that was a really special project content-wise and in terms of what it meant to the Asian American community.  It was not a big budget movie."    "Being on the set was amazing.  I visited Shanghai in 1986, but we filmed this in the early 1990s, and I felt that I was taken back to China.  We filmed it near Stanford University.  There was a mansion there which became the setting for many scenes.  The costume designer - with very little money - was able to get these fabulous costumes which in some cases were lent to her by women, and when I put on the costume, I felt like I stepped back in time."   "My character (Second Wife) -- might have been seen as a villainous type of character, who took away the child of another woman.  But in inhabiting the character, I realized that she had no choice.  It was either sink or swim.  It gave me a deep understanding of a woman’s place at that time in China."   "I agree that Second Wife could have been unsympathetic, but you made her real," I say.   Elizabeth nods and leans forward: "That scene as 'Second Wife' was really very harried.  We were losing the light because shooting earlier scenes had taken longer than expected, and we’d fallen behind schedule.  It was a huge set-up for our scene.  We had to line up five cars which were pulling into the driveway.  We had only two takes before the light would be gone."

"To me, the girl who played the daughter of 'Fourth Wife' stood out as a major talent," I say.    Elizabeth smiles.  "Yes there’s a story after Joy Luck Club about her.  Her name is Yi Ding.  She was born in China and left at age nine.  She’s been a US citizen since age 11.  I really loved her acting, and somehow our paths crossed again when I was at the American Film Institute directing my thesis film, The Water Ghost."    "I was looking all over the place for the right actress, and I had lost touch with this girl.  And then she called me.  She said that right at that moment she was up in San Francisco.  She was cleaning her drawers, and her telephone book fell out.   It opened right to my contact number.  She was going to UC Berkeley at the time, and she wanted to ask me some advice about going to college.  She became my lead actress in The Water Ghost, which I directed."   "Is she still working?"   "Yes, she’s almost like my surrogate daughter.  I mentored her."   "That’s fascinating," I say. "Because in the whole movie, she made the biggest impression on me.  She really stood out."

Now it's time to talk about Memoirs Of A Geisha (see Bobbi's Review under Movie Picks.) "The star, Zhang Ziyi, (also know as Ziyi Zhang), has been in some very big martial arts movies," I say.  "I saw her in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and was mesmerized by her.  I told everyone I thought she would be a super star if she wanted to be.  Is she as charismatic in person as she is on the screen?" “She’s extremely talented, and very relaxed when she’s not on the set," Elizabeth replies.  "I didn’t have any scenes with her even though I play her character’s mother.  My interaction was with a young girl who is playing her as a child.   When I did meet her in passing in the makeup room for instance, she was very friendly."  "She still lives with her parents in Beijing.  I understand that she didn’t speak English before she made this movie, and that she had to learn English for the movie," I say.    "Yes, and now she’s able to answer 'Q & A,' in English with great ease," Elizabeth says.

"Do you see more opportunities for for Asian actresses today and in the future?"    "I think my perspective about Hollywood is that it’s driven by economy," Elizabeth replies. "That’s the basis of every business.  The economy in China is changing so fast and so dramatically, I really do see that there are a lot of co-production opportunities.  Hence, there’s a lot more roles for Asians and Asian Americans as well."    "Mission Impossible 3 is doing filming in China," she adds.  "And then in Harry Potter, you saw an Asian girl.  So you ask yourself why is this happening?  It is economy based.  I can just foresee that there will be a lot more Asian content in films in the near future.  Everything in China is a lot less costly in terms of filming but has great production values."

"You teach acting and you direct in the Asian American Community, don’t you?" I ask.   "Yes," she replies.  "Most of the themes for my short films were from Asian mythology.  I grew up listening to Asian mythology on the radio in Hong Kong.  That is probably what inspired my love of story.  Directing is a natural extension of a love for story.  For me, I usually like to choose material that touches on both eastern and western culture.    "I just started teaching this past summer.  Before, I always felt like I wasn’t ready.  Maybe it was my Asian upbringing that you had to be so well educated, or you had to have a lot of experience in life in order to share a unique and rich perspective with young people.  But I decided, 'I’m ready' this past summer, and I taught an on-camera class through East West Players."    "East West Players is one of the longest established theaters in Los Angeles.  They do amazing plays.  They also have a lab where they encourage original plays.  In my class this summer, I taught 10 people, most of them young and new to the business.  By the end of the class, I told them 'the next part of your education and training is to get work, go out and audition, test yourself by applying what you've learned.'"   "I was so amazed that out of the 10 students in my class, 8 of them are working.  Not in major productions, but they’re working.  They’re going out there.  Using what they’ve learned over 6 weeks with only one class a week.  They all felt that they got something they were looking for.  I feel very blessed.  This was really one of my highlights of my professional life."   Publishers Note:   You can find out about taking classes, buying tickets for productions, and making donations to East West Players at www.east-westplayers.org.   Next month, Elizabeth will give us the inside scoop on writing a screenplay for Hollywood, her favorite actors and actresses, and the inner dynamics of the acting profession.

Giving You A Voice Internet Magazine is a division of MDS, LLC,