When you do action stuff and sci-fi stuff, you have a lot to hide behind - the hair and the makeup and the special effects. But when you play a normal girl, it's challenging because you have to trust yourself.

My parents would dress us up in traditional Vietnamese clothing to go to school for heritage day. We have a Vietnamese nanny that my parents wanted us to have so we could stay in touch and know where we came from.

A lot challenges me! Not psyching myself out, not doubting myself, not comparing myself to others... all of that challenges me. But inevitably, challenges are put into our lives so that we may grow and become the best version of who we are meant to be.

Whenever I meet someone new, I always extend a hand and say, 'Hi I'm Lana Condor... Condor like the ugly endangered bird.' I like to see how people react to that and if they laugh and, indeed, know what a condor is... chances are we're going to get along just fine!

I hoped that I would be a lead in my career; of course that was a hope of mine. But I never thought I would be so lucky to be the lead of a romcom. Simply because I don't get those opportunities, for probably many reasons, but one of would likely be because I'm Asian.

I think screenwriters, I think editors in the cutting room - they have a lot of responsibility that we don't think about, but they could cut the coverage of an Asian person to focus on a white person because, unknowingly, they think that white person has more to say or is more interesting.

I have a hard time expressing myself when I'm emotional, so my family has done this forever. We write each other letters if we're fighting or whatever. And my dad's a writer, but we write each other letters because we feel that it's easier to get out what you're truly saying if you write it down.

I quite enjoyed doing 'To All the Boys I've Loved Before' because I felt like I got the actual co-ed experience. Because I went to an all-girls school, and that was fun - I love just putting on a uniform and living my life - but I also like to flirt with guys. I didn't get to do that in high school.

When you're the only woman of color, and you walk into a room of people who don't look like you, most of them with blond hair and blue eyes, it's disheartening. The weirdest part is that I walk in and assume they think I'm auditioning to play a different role than them, but I'm going out for their same role.

I was so in love with this boy in eighth grade. I really thought he was the one for me, and then he broke up with me because he said that I liked him more than he liked me, and I was living in N.Y. at the time, and I was on the subway just, like, truly heartbroken because when you're that age, you don't think you are ever going to recover.

There's a misconception that I can't relate to the quote-unquote 'Asian-American experience' because I didn't grow up with an Asian mom and dad. And that's just not true. I am Asian American, and so playing a girl who is half Korean, half white, but her white dad tried really hard to connect with her mom's heritage - that's very familiar to me.

Share This Page