STEPHANIE HSU

“Everything Everywhere All at Once”

Like many performers from marginalized communities, there was a time when Hsu, the breakout star of “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” felt she couldn’t identify anyone, anywhere, to serve as a direct inspiration for the career she wanted. “I remember when I was a kid I told my mom that I wanted to be an actor,” Hsu says. “She pointed at a TV screen and said, ‘There’s nobody that looks like you — that seems impossible.’”

But in just over a decade, Hsu has taken a creative path through experimental theater, reality-based comedy (“Girl Code”), Broadway (“Spongebob Squarepants: The Broadway Musical”) and television (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”), to get to “Everything Everywhere,” a project as extraordinary — and uncategorizable — as the opportunity she now faces. “This movie is the most honest handshake I could possibly make with Hollywood, because it encapsulates so much of what I as an artist want to be doing in this world.”

As Hsu prepares for upcoming roles in writer-producer Adele Lim’s directorial debut and Rian Johnson and Natasha Lyonne’s series “Poker Face,” the multidimensional performer is only beginning to achieve the kind of success that embodies the change she wants to see in the world. Says Hsu, “I’m excited to continue to swing the pendulum in all different directions, and to do very different work that is surprising at every turn.”

— Todd Gilchrist

Reps: Agency: CAA; Management: Odenkirk Provissiero Entertainment; Legal: Ziffren Brittenham Influences: Robin Williams, Sandra Oh, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Elizabeth Swados