At age 93, beloved actor James Hong finally gets his star
LOS ANGELES >> James Hong, the ubiquitous veteran character actor who found a champion in “Lost” star Daniel Dae Kim, accepted his fan-funded star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame in a burst of drums, cymbals and Chinese lion dancers — all harbingers of joy and good fortune.
“I'm here! I'm alive!” the energetic 93-year-old said Tuesday as he accepted the 2,723rd star on the Walk of Fame, located between Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum and the TCL Chinese Theater. And Hong just made history as the oldest person ever to receive a star on the Walk of Fame.
Noting that he had no speech planned, “because I'm not that kind of person,” Hong said he preferred to enjoy seeing familiar faces and take in the moment as it happened.
His speech came after he had joked and improvised bits around the speeches of those who introduced him, including Kim, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” co-star Jamie Lee Curtis and Councilmember Mitch O'Farrell, the last of whom granted him an elaborate, hand-lettered proclamation from the City of Los Angeles.
The lion dancers and musicians stepped on Hong's words a bit, but that didn't discourage the actor from hustling over to where the dance was taking place and adding a few traditional and nontraditional dance steps himself amid the drums and cymbals.
Hong, who is Chinese American, was born in Minnesota and served stateside in the U.S. Army during the Korean War. He joins fellow performers of Asian descent including Anna May Wong, Mako, Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Lucy Liu on the Walk of Fame.
In the course of four days in August 2020, Kim raised the not-insubstantial sum needed to pay for Hong's star, then took on the process of submitting an application. On the GoFundMe page, the “Hawaii Five-0” actor wrote that Hong “epitomizes the term `working actor,' and that's not even taking into account all he's done to help further representation for actors of color.”