Eric Steinberg - Interview Excerpts

Interview Excerpts

Question: Does being of mixed descent affect you in your career choices?

Eric D. Steinberg: Yeah, the mixed race thing for me plays into everything I do, and unfortunately, I'm limited by it as well. I was very lucky in terms of most mixed-race people. I meet a lot of mixed-raced people now, but when I was growing up, there weren't that many people of mixed descent. Lately, I just see them everywhere, and a lot of them who I meet, if they grew up in a white neighborhood or whatever, they don't have any sense at all of tradition or heritage or things of that nature. But for me, it was different because we lived in Asia for a while. My dad is a professor of Asian Studies. He's at Georgetown. My mother, she's a Korean woman, so it was very much a matriarchal household. My mother pulled the strings, so my upbringing was very unique. Most mixed-race people don't have it so good, in the sense of having a balance, and me being so in touch with my Korean culture. So, that was all my mother, and I'm very fortunate.

But in terms of my profession, it comes to bear in everything, and it depends on who's doing it. Most of the time, it's white people casting so you know, for them, half-Asian is plenty. You're never white, cause you can never pass, but half-Asian isn't Asian enough for the Asian businessmen roles when I walk in there. So it's…Asian people say to me, "Oh, it must be a benefit!" and I say, "You know, it really isn't." And white people say, "Oh, it must be a benefit!" and I'm like, "No. It really isn't." Because either way, I'm on the outside. Either I'm not white enough, or I'm not Asian enough. So you end up playing all the fringe characters, the crazies, the outcasts, or whatever. So that can be tiresome. L.A. is the city of image. It's all about image in this business, about exploiting image, and everyone has to deal with their own cross to bear when it comes to that. Certainly, the Asian women you're talking to also have a difficult road.

Question: Do you think, as far as the types of roles/themes you choose, that it deals with a certain type of tension…

Eric D. Steinberg: Sometimes it deals with the racial aspect of it, and sometimes it doesn't, but it's always about that tension. I was trying to explain it: it's strange, because for instance, my folks are of mixed race, and they're still together after 37 years, but there are some things that East and West never meet. That's just the way it is. And oddly enough, that can be ok. And it can also not be ok. And for me, I have that tension in me all the time. There's a drive for individualism and preservation of myself, and agency, more power. And then, there's my responsibility. Really, what's Confucian: the foundation, which is about the roles I play and the responsibilities that I'll be judged for. So that tension is always there.