Overview
Rosalind Chao (; born September 23, 1959) is an American actress. Chao's best-known roles have been 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.
Early life
Chao was born in Anaheim, California. Chao's parents were Peking opera performers, before relocating to Anaheim where they ran a successful pancake restaurant, Chao’s Chinese and American Restaurant, across the street from Disneyland, and employed her there from an early age. She attended Pomona College in Claremont, California, and later USC, graduating in 1978.
For some time, Chao worked at Disneyland as an international tour guide. She also contemplated pursuing journalism as a career.
Career
Chao's parents were instrumental in her decision to pursue acting; she began at the age of five in a California-based Peking opera traveling company at the instigation of her parents who were already heavily involved, and during the summers they sent her to Taiwan to further develop her acting skills.
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).