For the past few years, I was the more visible Asian performer, and I think it gave young girls a kind of role model showing it's possible to actually reach success doing movies.

I went to the International Ballet competition when I was 15 or 16 and that was the first time I competed. I didn't get very far but it was the first time that I realized what I needed to do to become a dancer. I realized how hard it was.

The difference between me and American-born actors is that I came here with the expectation of not being treated fairly.

I danced in a Lifetime film. We shot in Canada and I got to work with a lot of the dancers who do So You Think You Can Dance, Canada.

Physical hunger and physical poverty is something I could only imagine. I've been poor when I was in China... As kids we never had to starve, but just didn't have enough meat, enough rice.

If you have the right costumes you feel more confident as the character, they really help you act.

Since age 14, I know what actors fear, what they like; I know how to get things out of them and I listen to them better, since I've been there.