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Rosalind Chao
American actress From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Rosalind Chao (born September 23, 1957)[a] is an American actress. She appeared as Soon-Lee Klinger in the mid-1980s CBS show AfterMASH, Rose Hsu Jordan in the 1993 movie The Joy Luck Club, the recurring character Keiko O'Brien on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in the 1990s, and Dr. Kim on The O.C. in 2003. She also played Hua Li, Mulan's mother, in the live-action 2020 remake of Mulan. In 2024 she starred as Ye Wenjie in the Netflix production of 3 Body Problem. She played the role of Pei Pei in the 2003 film Freaky Friday and its 2025 sequel Freakier Friday. From 2023-24, Chao appeared in the Netflix fantasy series Sweet Tooth, earning a Children's and Family Emmy Award for her performance.
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Early life, family and education
Rosalind Chao was born in Los Angeles, California,[7] and raised in nearby Anaheim. Her parents were performers with the Peking opera[8] before they relocated to Anaheim, where they ran a successful pancake restaurant, Chao's Chinese and American Restaurant, across the street from Disneyland. Chao worked there from an early age.[9][10]
She attended Pomona College in Claremont, California,[11] and then the University of Southern California, where she earned a degree in broadcast journalism in 1978.[11] She worked at Disneyland as an international tour guide[12] and contemplated pursuing journalism as a career.[8]
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Career
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Chao's parents were instrumental in her decision to pursue acting.[13] She began acting at the age of five, in the California-based Peking opera traveling company with which her parents were involved. During the summer, they sent her to Taiwan for further acting study and experience.[14]
As a child, she played the daughter of a laundry owner (played by James Hong) on a 1970 episode of Here's Lucy, "Lucy the Laundress".[15]
Deciding not to pursue acting, Chao enrolled in the communications department at the University of Southern California where she earned her degree in journalism. However, after a year as a radio newswriting intern at the CBS-owned Hollywood radio station KNX,[14] she returned to acting.[16][13]
Chao's breakthrough role was that of Soon-Lee, a South Korean refugee, in the final episodes of the TV series M*A*S*H.[16] Soon-Lee married longtime starring character Maxwell Klinger (Jamie Farr) in the series finale "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen",[17] which aired on February 28, 1983, and was the most-watched US sitcom television episode of all time as of 2021. Chao repeated the role in the M*A*S*H sequel series, AfterMASH (1983), her first role billed at co-star status.[18]
Chao played Japanese exo-botanist Keiko O'Brien on the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. In 2010, a preliminary casting memo for The Next Generation from 1987 was published, revealing that Chao was originally considered for the part of Enterprise security chief Tasha Yar.[19]
In August 2018, Chao was cast as Mulan's mother in the 2020 live-action retelling of Mulan.[20][21] In 2019, she was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, citing her contributions to the critically acclaimed films The Joy Luck Club and I Am Sam.[22][23][24]
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Personal life
Chao met her husband Simon Templeman while they were working in theatre at the Mark Taper Forum.[25] They have a son and a daughter.[25][26]
Filmography
Film
Television
Theatre
Video games
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Awards and nominations
Notes
References
External links
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