Downsizing's Hong Chau on director Alexander Payne, Big Little Lies and roles for Asian people
Chau earned a nomination for Best Supporting Actress at the Golden Globe Awards for her role in ‘Downsizing’, which is set in a world where technology can shrink humans to five inches
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Your support makes all the difference.“I would like to take this opportunity to announce my retirement!” jokes Hong Chau, the rising star with a Golden Globe nomination for her role in Alexander Payne’s new film Downsizing. If she did bow out, nobody could blame her wanting to spoil a near-perfect start. Already she’s worked for Paul Thomas Anderson (on Inherent Vice) and Jean-Marc Vallée (on the HBO hit Big Little Lies). Now she can add Payne, the Oscar-winning director of Sideways, to this impressive list of auteurs.
Curiously, Chau’s time with Payne was hinted at during her work on Big Little Lies, the award-winning show about mothers and murder in Monterey. Chau, who played the catty Jackie, co-starred with three other Payne alumni – Laura Dern (Citizen Ruth), Reese Witherspoon (Election) and Shailene Woodley (The Descendants). Although Chau’s role was small and she had become familiar with acting in things nobody watches, Big Little Lies “hit a deep vein”. Now she gets to be his new leading lady. “I’ve seen all of his previous films,” she gushes. “I’m a huge fan of his.”
A social satire with sci-fi elements, Downsizing is set in a world where technology has been invented to shrink humans to five inches. An eco-friendly move, with less waste or precious resources used by these tiny people, it also affords those that undergo the irreversible procedure – like Matt Damon’s lead character, the affable Paul Safranek – the chance to live a wealthy existence. Money goes a lot further when you’re living in the equivalent of a doll’s house.
When Safranek shrinks, he eventually comes across Chau’s character Ngoc Lan Tran, a Vietnamese dissident who was “downsized” by her government as punishment and lost her left leg below the knee. “I have not seen a character like this, male or female, that has so much going on, in terms of being funny and heartbreaking and heroic but also needs help,” says Chau. “Somebody who is spiritual but also very practical and honest… it’s so much wrapped into one character.”
Intriguingly, Chau, 38, had no idea there was an Asian female role in Downsizing when she first read the script – which she only did because she wanted to find out what an Alexander Payne sci-fi might be like. “I was so buzzed after I read the script. I read it in one sitting. It was so funny, but it went in so many different directions.” When she auditioned, she was told Payne would take two months to decide on her casting; but he was so excited, he flew to meet her within two days.
Chau took inspiration from a variety of sources for the character – from writer Flannery O’Connor to Honduran environmental activist Berta Cáceres to Akira Kurosawa’s film Red Beard, about a town doctor and his intern. Some critics, however, have focused on her accent, claiming her broken English is nothing short of mockery. Chau responds by calling such questions “dehumanising”; as she puts it, “When I look at my parents I don’t see a stereotype.”
Living in Vietnam through the war, Chau’s mother and father fled on a boat in 1979 and wound up in a Thai refugee camp, where Chau was born. Eventually, they made their way to New Orleans. “I’m very grateful to have grown up the way I did,” Chau says. “Having to go to school with all English speakers and then coming home and just speaking Vietnamese with your family, or having to go to the bank and explain what the teller is saying to them… those were things that not everybody [at school] had to deal with.”
During her youth, Chau watched her parents work plenty of low-paid jobs – washing dishes in kitchens, humping goods in supermarket warehouses. In her teenage years, they ran a neighbourhood convenience store “where everyone would come and get a little snack”. It was inspirational, says Chau. “They have a work ethic that I have carried into my own life.” With her parents’ backing, Chau went to Boston University where she studied creative writing and film.
She clearly reveres her parents for what they did for her. “They’re always in my life. I am who I am because of them and whatever strength or ability to not shrink comes from them… they have had such a hard life and yet they laugh the hardest. People who I’ve encountered who have had more given to them, they tend to be more disappointed and unable to carry on when something doesn’t go their way, and that’s not my parents.”
When she left college, Chau worked for PBS and considered a career in documentaries. “I loved movies and I wasn’t sure what aspect of the movie industry I wanted to be in. I just fell into acting a little bit. I honestly did.” Acting in short films for friends, she began to consider making a career of it. “Up until about two years ago was the first time I felt confident, saying out loud, ‘I’m an actor.’ I didn’t go to theatre school so I always felt a little bit insecure about that.”
What did her parents make of her entering such a risky profession? “I think that they’re super-excited and happy for me. I don’t think that any of us thought that I’d become a successful actor. I was actually very shy when I was younger and I did not have any dreams of being an actor, even into my adulthood.” While she began to get roles – notably in David Simon’s Treme – it’s been difficult, she says. “In Hollywood, there’s not a ton of roles for Asian people. So a lot of it is waiting and waiting and waiting.”
It’s why she keeps her existence in Los Angeles minimalist. For the first four years living in the city, she didn’t have a car. “I love public transportation!” she exclaims. “Who wants to sit in a car and be angry at other drivers for eight hours? I’d rather sit on a bus or train and read a book.” Her expenses are also minimal. “I like to be very simple in my lifestyle. My only extravagance is… I buy lots of toys and meats for my dog.” She has an 80lb Rottweiler-Australian shepherd mix named Kobe.
She’s less forthcoming about marriage or partners (“I don’t want to talk about that”), perhaps because she’s yet to adjust to the harsh glare of the spotlight. “I’m not a huge celebrity,” she remarks, but with the Oscar nominations due soon, this could change. What won’t shift is Chau’s desire to pursue roles that don’t stereotype the Asian experience. Next up is American Woman, playing a radical who helps real-life kidnap victim Patty Hearst. Retirement, it seems, is not an option.
‘Downsizing’ opens on 24 January
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