Ke Huy Quan turned down his upcoming action movie With Love twice because he didn’t think he was the right person for the character.

The Everything Everywhere All at Once star thought the film’s producers David Leitch and Kelly McCormick had come to the “wrong person” when they sent him the script because the lead character in an action movie is typically played by a white actor.

Even when they circled back to him a second time, the Asian actor said no again because he still couldn’t see himself in the role.

“I read the script and I said, ‘Oh, you’ve got the wrong person. This script is written for somebody else, for a white actor,'” he recalled on the Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard podcast. “I actually passed on it and they came back to the second time and they go, ‘Read it again.’ And I passed the second time.

“And then they go, ‘We want you to come in.’ I remember meeting them in person and they have slides of me as that character and I was staring at it (and thinking), ‘How come he (Leitch) can see me in this role and I can’t see myself in this role?'”

The Goonies star, who was born in Vietnam to Chinese parents, realised that he had been “conditioned” to think he couldn’t lead a Hollywood action movie due to the lack of Asian representation in those roles.

“It dawned on me that because my entire life, when I got to a movie theatre, when I watch a movie similar to this, it always stars someone not like me. So I didn’t know that I was conditioned to think a certain way,” he candidly shared.

With Love, which marks the Oscar-winning actor’s first lead role, also stars Ariana DeBose, Cam Gigandet and Lio Tipton. It will be released next year.

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