How to Have a Life Outside Your Career with Amy Hill

Foster and Cesar sit down with actress and comedienne Amy Hill (Magnum P.I., All-American Girl, 50 First Dates) where she opens up about growing up mixed-race and "othered" in Seattle, finding her voice through Japanese theater and improv comedy, and becoming a single mom via adoption at 47. She traces her 200+ credit Hollywood career back to one rule: say yes first, figure out the rest later. This episode digs into identity, representation, and the quiet resilience it takes to build a creative life entirely on your own terms.

In this episode they explore: 

• Why Amy refuses to drop an accent on command 
• Inside her decision to adopt and become a single mom at 47
• How "yes, and" became her entire life philosophy.

Amy Hill

• IG: @amyhillactor
• Amy Hill on IMDB

If this episode spoke to you, you will love From Homeless to the Oscars: Dedrick Bonner on Resilience. You can also watch the episodes on YouTube.

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Reach out to the show—send an email or voice note to beautyinthebreakpod@gmail.com and be sure to follow on Instagram and TikTok. 

Cesar Cardona:

• Receive his newsletter Insights That Matter
• Get guided meditation from Cesar on his website 
• Listen to music from Cesar + The Clew on Apple Music and Spotify

Foster Wilson:

• Buy her poetry book Afternoon Abundance
• Learn about her postpartum doula services
• Receive her newsletter Foster’s Village

Created & Hosted by: Cesar Cardona and Foster Wilson

Executive Producer: Glenn Milley

Editor: Bessie Fong

Special Guest: Amy Hill

This episode is brought to you by Arlene Thornton & Associates

Transcript

Welcome back, everybody, to Beauty in the Break.
Today, we have actress, comedian, TV icon, Amy Hill.
Amy, welcome to the show.
Well, thanks for having me.
You are just a delight.
I'm so excited for this conversation.
Can you start off by telling us what's beautiful in your world?
Well, I live in Hawaii.
I think enough said.
Enough said, right?
Yeah, I'm so lucky that I get to live here.
I still work in Los Angeles or other places, but I just wake up in the morning to the ocean
and the beaches and really walk around this neighborhood with my dog.
And it's beautiful, and people are beautiful, and everybody's just lovely.
So I have nothing to complain about.
Oh, I love that so much.
When did you move to Hawaii?
With Magnum PI.
I was here just during shooting, and then I go back to Los Angeles on hiatus and think,
why?
Why?
Why am I going back?
So I decided after the second season that I would buy a condo.
And that's when we had the shutdown.
Three days later, the pandemic hit.
But it was a great place to be during the pandemic.
And my daughter was going to UH, so I was able to be on the same island as her.
We did not stay together, but same island.
How often are you getting in that water?
Maybe at least once a week, but not every day.
Okay.
It's warm there, that water.
Because it's salty.
It's like a bathtub.
Yeah, but you know, you go in, you got to take a bath after, so you have to make choices.
The water is beautiful.
It's beautiful.
It's cold here in California, in Los Angeles.
I know.
But I'm from Florida, so the water was salty and warm growing up as well.
Same thing.
Well, there's a part of me that, like, the moment I ever find myself in Hawaii, I'm going
to go ahead and jump on in that water for the first time.
Oh, you have to go to, yeah.
I mean, when you're on vacation and all you're doing is swimming and doing stuff, but I have
stuff going on.
So I think, should I go in today?
Oh, but then I have to go take a shower, put makeup on after, and da-da-da-da-da, whatever.
So I'm very lazy.
That's so beautiful that you live there.
I love that.
And that we live in a world where you can just fly to go do your work and come back.
And you have done just an incredible amount of work in your lifetime.
I would say you are a prolific, very successful actor.
You have over 200 credits on IMDb, which is, like, insane.
Like, who has that?
I used to remember it would be, like, 100 was a lot.
Who has 200 credits?
A lot of people.
You know, now a lot of people do because we all do animation.
Right.
And, you know, so those credits are a lot.
Yes.
And a lot of people, I think, I don't know, are audio books in there, too, and dubbing?
I mean, there's a lot of different ways that people under said contracts make a living.
Yeah.
So.
Just one of those roles was Kumu and Magnum P.I., as you mentioned.
Yes.
Which was 94 episodes.
And you did 47 episodes of Just Add Magic, which my kids have watched.
Yes.
But the list goes on and on and on.
So people obviously recognize you.
Do they stop you on the street?
Yes.
And I'm not sure, you know, why they're stopping me.
Like, this morning, I'm at a hotel, and I went to have breakfast.
It's a Hampton Inn.
So, you know, they have that waffle maker.
So anyway, I went to have breakfast, and these people came up and said, Amy.
And I was like, why do I know them?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What do you do with that?
Nobody says Amy.
Yes.
So I looked, and they went, you're Amy Hill, right?
And I said, okay.
Now I get it.
But I don't know what they were.
Oh, yeah.
They recognized me from 50 First Dates.
Well, it could be so many things.
I mean, you have painted my childhood with so much joy and humor.
I watched the Hughleys as a kid.
I watched Seinfeld as a kid.
I know Frasier forward and backwards.
And you were in an episode.
And I'm like, oh, Maureen Nevosa.
I know who that is.
Yes.
Yeah.
Oh, my God.
And I was excited because I was with Elvis Costello.
Right.
That's the same episode.
He was playing in the little corner, and he wouldn't want to leave.
That's right.
That's right.
But he was so nervous about doing it.
And I'm thinking, you're Elvis Costello.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He's playing in the cafe that she owns.
And she's like, well, I like him here.
And Frasier's like, I'll have to find somewhere else.
And the whole, you know, Frasier ensues.
So good.
So if we go all the way back to before you broke through into this crazy industry, right?
Yes.
You grew up in a very small town in South Dakota.
How did you like-
Well, I was born there.
We left when I was six.
But we go back every summer.
So I'm glad we left.
Yeah.
You left South Dakota for?
Seattle.
Seattle.
Okay.
That's where I grew up, Seattle, which was another kind of small town at the time.
Yeah.
And how did you find performing?
Oh, when I was in Deadwood, there were no people to play with.
I was just by myself in the TV.
So I recreated a lot of what I saw on television in my living room, and I did all the parts.
That's how I did it.
How was that for your parents?
How did they enjoy that?
Well, my mother thought maybe I would need therapy later.
She was a little concerned about me acting different characters.
Too many personalities going on.
In my imagination.
She never saw anything like that, I don't think, in Japan.
My dad, you know, dads are not very involved with kids.
They were back then, I don't think.
Yeah.
No, he didn't have any idea.
My mother, though, was home.
So you scratched that itch at some point in Seattle?
In Seattle, it was a very secret itch.
I didn't want people to know because, you know, I was in a world that I was absolutely othered in.
I was not like anybody else.
So I always felt like I was walking on eggshells.
I had to be very careful so that people would not turn on me.
This is all in my imagination, really.
I don't think people, they just didn't interact with me.
There were a couple teachers that were really horrible to me.
But instead of being offended, I was always like, I will try harder to make them like me.
They never did.
So by the time I was in high school, I got up the nerve to take a drama class.
And the drama teacher was amazing.
He was really supportive and put me in every play in high school.
I even got to drive his car when we had to go get props or something.
He'd give me the keys to his car.
That's how much he liked me or trusted me.
So I was planning to go to drama school at university, but I also wanted to leave Seattle.
I wanted to travel.
And my mom's Japanese, so she said you'd go to Japan.
And my dad said, finish, Finland finish, not dead, finish.
People are very weird.
And I didn't want to go to Finland.
So I got into a university in Tokyo and went to Tokyo right after graduating, like a month later.
Wow.
I was on a plane.
So you grew up as one of the only mixed race or Asian descent kids, right?
Yes.
In your town.
In my neighborhood.
In your neighborhood.
Was that where the othering came from?
Oh, totally.
Right.
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
Yes.
I'm black, Spanish, and Native American.
And I grew up in the South.
And I'm all these mixed things.
My father's Spanish.
He's very fair-skinned.
And so they would see him.
They'd see my mom, who's dark-skinned.
And they would look at me.
And I would get othered constantly, being a mixed person in this world.
Yeah.
I got what are you a lot.
Yes.
What are you?
And here in Hawaii, nobody does that.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
You would fit in.
You think so?
You know, so here's a side note, if I may say.
Nobody would just assume you were Native Hawaiian or.
I get that sometimes.
I bet you do.
Yeah.
Somebody once, I was at a, this is back when I used to drink.
I was at a bar, and this guy was walking up to me trying to hit on me, and I was not
interested.
He just started speaking Spanish to me, as if like that was going to smooth me over.
And I said, excuse me, I'm Hawaiian.
And he goes, I'm so sorry.
I go, it's fine.
And then I walk away, just to like get away from him.
I got that in, I got that in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
A lot of times people would speak to me in Spanish.
And I, unfortunately, I learned Spanish in high school, junior high and high school.
I was an honor student in Spanish.
So I could speak Spanish.
And I'd say, yo soy japonés.
And they'd go, they'd look at me like suspicious, like I was denying my culture.
I'm like, no, I'm not.
Anyway.
You went to Japan.
And did you feel, what did it feel like to be in Japan?
It was amazing.
Suddenly, now here's the thing.
It's not a good thing for people of mixed race necessarily, but that's what people like
hopper people do, entertainment.
So I was immediately cool.
I got to do like all kinds of entertainment things.
I had my own radio show.
I was great.
I had a lovely life because I was exotic in a good way.
But everybody assumed I was Japanese because my Japanese, I learned it very quickly and I spoke pretty fluently and didn't have an accent.
So people just thought I was just this really cool Japanese person who sometimes didn't even think that I was hopper.
They just thought I was cute.
Tell us that word, hopper, just for anybody listening who doesn't know what that is.
Hopper is a Hawaiian word that people of mixed race have sort of appropriated.
It's hopper, half haoli, hopper haoli.
You know, we didn't get that cute word growing up.
We had half or mixed race or Eurasian was kind of exotic, but.
I got even worse words that were.
Yeah, I'm sure you did.
I got mutt all the time.
Mutt?
I would get mutt.
Yeah, I didn't get, I didn't get mutt, but I got half, which always makes you feel less than.
Not complete, right?
Yeah.
Exactly.
How did you manage through that?
How did you work your life and still have the resilience to work through that sort of othering from the society?
We need that social acceptance sometimes.
Well, in a weird way, it's affected me in that I don't expect, I feel not entitled to anything.
I feel like I have to work really hard to get anything in this world because I'm sure this happens with a lot of people of color,
that you have to work extra hard to get the same value as the other person who is Caucasian.
So we all experience that, I feel.
Yeah.
But so it's just made me work harder.
And I feel like, you know, I didn't expect success.
I worked really hard to just do the best I could.
And then all the success comes and I'm just like, are they going to wake up one day?
I still have a little imposter syndrome, but I wake up.
I mean, I feel like they're going to wake up and go, wait a minute, who let you in?
Yeah.
You know?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Don't we all?
But that's why I keep.
Yeah.
Don't we?
I know.
Well, now I know that it's not just me.
Which is helpful.
Which is helpful in some strange way.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Feeling like you're an other than finding out everybody is feeling it too.
Yeah, yeah.
Now you're not anymore.
Othered for some reason.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, you look at them and go, God, they're so.
I remember in Los Angeles when I first moved there, I was in some workshop and this beautiful
blonde, blue-eyed girl came up and said, you're so lucky.
I said, I am.
Really?
Where?
You're so, you look so different.
I look like everybody else in this room.
And I went, oh, yeah, you're right.
I mean, that's a look.
Right.
They're looking the blonde, blue-eyed, beautiful young person.
And I come in and don't look like anything that you're looking for.
Well, I appreciate you letting us know Hapa as well.
I derailed the conversation for the sake of that to clarify it.
Yeah.
No, yeah.
So I love that you kind of found part of yourself when you went to Tokyo and that you, the performance
started coming out of you in a way where you're like, oh, entertainment, this is how I fit in.
And then tell me if this is correct.
You went back to San Francisco and you worked at the Asian American Theater Company.
Yes.
Tell me what you were doing with that theater company.
Well, I, when I was living in Seattle, I kind of dabbled a little bit.
There was a theater called the Asian Exclusion Act.
And I was taking a Japanese class at the University of Washington.
And this guy stood up and he said, we're starting a theater and we need some people who have any
theater background.
And I was like, did high school theater.
And so I did a couple of plays at the Asian Exclusion Act.
And then I went to Japan.
I went back to Japan.
I was married by then to a Japanese guy.
I spent seven years in Japan.
And the people at the Asian Exclusion Act were writing and saying, we're going to San Francisco.
We have this other theater.
It'd be great if you could come.
And then my ex-husband wanted to study to get his master's in psychology because they don't
have that in Japan.
Oh, so he's on a court of the market, I guess.
Exactly.
They didn't have, people did not go to therapists or that wasn't a thing in Japan.
You just suffered or committed suicide.
You know.
Well, for the longest time, Japan had a high suicide rate.
I could understand.
I think they still do.
People are still not talking to anybody.
Anyway, he got into school at San Francisco State.
And I went back and studied theater there and joined the Asian American Theater Company.
And because I spoke Japanese and because I'd lived in Japan with people embracing me as a Japanese person, it was like, don't, don't fuck with me.
You know, if they ever questioned who I was, it would be like, do you speak Japanese?
I can do Asian better than you.
Also, because I'd lived in Japan, I could do a lot of different other Asian accents too because I had a lot of friends that were Chinese and Filipino, a lot of Filipinos at my university.
And I'd been to the Philippines.
And one of the first shows I ever did at Asian American Theater Company was playing a Filipina matriarch.
Well, right after that, somebody called the theater and asked if anybody could do a Filipino accent.
And I was like, I can't.
So I auditioned for Philippine Airlines and got the gig.
For six years, I was the voice of Philippine Airlines.
Whoa.
Wow.
Right?
Yeah.
Wow.
Talk about a beautiful break in that sense.
Well, these things, you know, you just keep working really hard and the universe kind of lets you flow into different things.
I find myself as long as I make the steady pace.
Don't rush myself and don't sit idle, but just make a steady pace.
No.
The things just start happening and opening up.
They do.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They say you do the footwork and you let the universe just take care of the rest.
You just keep.
That's true.
I mean, you really can't just sit and do nothing.
You've got to.
You paddle the boat and you let the universe steer.
I've been a Filipina matriarch and did all the work to get it right.
I couldn't have gone and auditioned and got it.
Everything leads.
One thing leads to another.
It does.
And you were like directing and writing as well, right?
Because it was a new theater.
Nobody knew anything about anything.
So and nobody was like studying theater because, you know, nobody thought they could make a living doing that.
So most people were studying, you know, business administration or English literature or whatever.
And I took some classes at American Conservatory Theater.
And many of us did that.
And they were also sort of our mentor organization.
So they would give us master classes in different things.
So we had somebody who was sort of helping us to move forward and become better.
But, you know, we had to just roll up our sleeves and do stuff.
So tell me how it's just if you don't have the knowledge of it.
How do you where do you start?
How do you.
Ignorance is bliss.
Damn.
Right.
I don't know how you're going to say that question to answer that question.
Yes.
Most things I did.
I'm walking away like, all right, I'm cool.
But I didn't know how I got here.
I know.
They say you're going to direct the next show.
OK.
All right.
Yeah.
And then you just do it.
There's a bit of a.
And I ask this question to people on our show.
There's a bit of a fuck it moment in there for you as well.
Yeah.
Well, yeah.
You just got to do it.
Also, when I was in San Francisco, I started doing improvisational sketch comedy.
But it was a sketch.
The teacher was very serious about not making jokes, but actually, you know, like investigating character work and your space.
And it was a really lovely thing where.
So you were being really authentic on stage in your improvisational journey.
You didn't know where the scenes were going.
But because of him, you know, everybody knows yes and I think from improv.
And that kind of idea about life has really imbued me with an attitude about everything.
That's why you just say yes, even if you're terrified.
Say yes and figure it out as you go.
Because, I mean, I'm sure many times you guys have had this experience where somebody says, I want you to do this character in a play or a film or something.
And you just say, what made me, what made them think I could do this idea?
And you just say yes.
And then you, you know, try to make it work.
And that was the whole time I was at Asian American theater company.
Wow.
Just say yes.
Doing improv.
And that is exactly what happened when someone asked you about a one-woman show.
Is that right?
Yes, it is.
Tell me that story.
Well, because I was living in L.A. by that time and I was struggling.
I was a big fish in a small pond in San Francisco.
Then moved to L.A. and went, what the?
So somebody said they were doing, they needed an interpreter on this Japanese co-production in Monterey.
And I said yes, because I was going to get a thousand a week to be an interpreter.
And I thought, okay, I could do that.
And I'd learned something about, you know, film, what it takes to make a movie.
So I said yes, but it was hell, horrible, miserable.
Every day I just, because you find that they weren't getting along.
The Japanese and the Americans were not getting along.
So I would be the one that they would yell at.
They're not yelling at me.
They're yelling at the Japanese guy.
Through you.
The Japanese guy yelling.
Yeah.
But they're yelling through me.
Through you, yeah.
So they're saying, tell him what an ass, Foley.
And you have to make it nicer?
Yes, yes.
So I was getting all this toxic energy from everybody.
And I was just like, oh.
So during that time, somebody called and said, we heard you had a solo show.
And I said, yes.
Please.
Please.
I had nothing.
But I said, yes.
And they said, well, do you have a script?
And I said, well, it's in LA.
And this is before computers.
So they said, oh, okay.
And they just trusted me.
You had nothing.
I had nothing.
But I had an idea because I had been, you know, the Japan experience I knew had transformed
my life in many ways.
It made me stronger, feel better about my identity was good.
And because I'd worked at the Asian American Theater Company, all I worked with was new playwrights.
So I knew how a script sort of needed to become a fully realized play.
And then in improvisational comedy, I realized how you needed to make a scene move was just
to keep adding information going forward in a scene.
So I kind of had an idea.
So I wrote like 500 pages, which then was whittled down to like 20.
Yeah.
And it became, or maybe less, I can't remember, but it became a solo show.
And also because of improv, you have to let the scene go where it's supposed to go.
Even though you start with an idea, you have to go in and go, all right, it might go this
way or that way.
And just whatever happens, you just go with it.
It's interviewing as well.
And that's what happened.
I had an idea in my head about Tokyo Bound.
And then it became this revelation that I didn't expect.
It was a great experience, but terrifying because the first time I did it, I thought I'm going
to get judged on my writing, my acting and my life.
Right.
So, but people liked it.
It became Critics' Choice.
I expanded it and then, you know, it became one of these things where, you know, CBS wanted
to have a deal with me.
I had no other idea.
So I'd go in these meetings and they said, what else do you have?
And I go, nothing.
I have nothing.
That's wild.
I wish I thought of something, but I had nothing.
What do you think was your biggest breakthrough moment when it came to film and television?
All-American Girl.
Okay.
How did that come about?
Well, I was doing my mom in a lot of improv stuff.
So if improv wasn't working, like a scene wasn't working, they'd say, bring Mrs. Hill in.
And then I'd come in as my mom and I would just channel her.
I had no idea what she was going to say or do.
So I had been doing that a long time.
And I think Margaret Cho, I knew from San Francisco as a standup, and I knew that her mom was very
similar to my mom.
She was Korean, but still.
Archetypally similar.
Wacky.
Yeah.
So she said that she'd like me to audition for her mom.
And I went in and I saw in the script that the grandma was way better and more suitable to my mom.
So I auditioned for the grandma and I got the part, but it was like the pilot I was kind of on.
They weren't sure that I would go to series because they didn't believe that I could play a grandma because I was only like 39 or something.
Right.
You were 39 playing 65.
Yeah.
And Korean, but you're not Korean.
No.
Yeah.
But, you know, again, I worked really hard.
I found somebody to be my model for this old Korean lady.
And of course, I used my mother, but gave her a little Korean twist.
That accent had to be a little bit different because she's not Korean.
But the core of her, the humanity of her was actually my mother.
So that was fine.
And it was just like the layering was Korean.
Wow.
I love that show.
I grew up watching that show.
So that's what I know you from best.
It was great.
It was a wonderful experience because it was also for me like honoring my mother finally.
Yeah.
On national television.
Wow.
Well said.
But Koreans thought I was Korean.
They'd be like, so is your mom, Korean?
That's a good note then.
That's a great compliment.
I know.
I know.
It was good.
Well, that like leads me into this idea of the roles that you have been offered over the years.
Especially, we're starting, if we start with your breakthrough moment being All-American Girl,
although you've had so much experience before that, you're breaking in in the 90s.
Right.
And we are full, like televisions full of stereotypes all over the place.
So how do you read a role and how did you start reading roles and decide, like, I can or I can't take on this role?
Because a lot of them are Japanese or Japanese or Japanese-Americans.
I mean, you're American, but, you know.
Yeah.
If I cannot find a place to make it a human being with the depth and authenticity of a human, I don't have a problem with accents at all, unless there's nothing there but an accent and they're a joke.
It's insightful.
So to me, I can't do that.
But there are some accents I'm not good at.
I can't do Thai or Vietnamese.
Those are really hard accents for me.
I haven't been around enough Thai people, I guess, so that I can mimic them in a way.
I find it kind of offensive sometimes when I go in and I do create a character that has an accent because I see the character as being an immigrant like my mother.
And then just randomly the casting person or the director will say, we don't want an accent.
And I want to say, well, you know, that's a different human.
I'm not – I can't just, like, switch to another.
It's not like the accent just disappears.
It's a different person.
Of course.
Because that I have to create for you.
Do you understand?
Yeah.
Well, now you have this sort of tug of war going, this, like, soft tug of war.
How do you navigate through that if you're on set in the middle of it?
They just say that no accent.
And I'm like, well, okay.
You know, it would have been nice to give me a heads up on that.
Then I would have created no accent.
But I feel like this character, it's not written with bad English because sometimes that's what I don't like either when it's like they can't speak English correctly.
But they don't know.
It's always a white person writing the broken English.
So it's like some weird broken English that's not like anybody's actual –
Yeah, TH is an F for something like that.
Well, you know, you go, I stay.
You know, that kind of weird thing where you just say, well, you know, a lot of people have accents, but they can actually speak grammatically correctly.
How have you seen the industry changing over these last three decades when it comes to representation?
I feel like sometimes it's veered too far to where they want – if it's a character that's Chinese, speaking English, but Chinese, they actually want to hire just an ethnically Chinese person, actor.
And that's tough because, for me, it would be like I have to find somebody who's tradition Japanese if I had to be absolutely ethnically correct.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
But I feel as though I know that in my experience, I know that I have people in my life that I can use to create a character that is really whole, but not always.
And then I just won't go in and do it.
And what I don't appreciate sometimes is that there are actors who don't do the homework, maybe because they don't come from theater like me, where you are creating a character that's whole.
So they will just slap on an accent, but like a standard Chinese or a standard Japanese, where it's not even a good accent.
And these are people who are Asian American actors.
And I'm like, do the homework, do the work.
If you're going to do an accent, make it a real person.
Yeah.
And that annoys me too.
But I know that at a certain point in my life of being around Asian American actors, a lot of them didn't want to do accents ever, maybe because they couldn't do one.
But also they loved characters that started out on the page, you know, Michael Smith, and then they got cast.
And I'm like, we should be able to do everything.
Even if it was Michael Tanaka, you should still be able to do this character.
Absolutely.
Just create real people as much as possible.
I mean, I'm playing Hawaiian all the time.
I'm not Hawaiian.
Yeah, right.
And I tell people, you know, because I'm in Hawaii, I live here, and everybody's like, ooh, represent.
And I'm like, thank you.
But at the same time, they're like, are you from the Big Island?
I'm like, no, yeah, the big, big island.
Continent.
And I, you know, I never pretend that I'm, you know, I was born and raised here.
In fact, sometimes my friends who are all, most not all of them, but many of them are born and raised here.
They're real.
Kanaka.
And I, they say, da, da, da, da, da.
I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about.
You know, I'm not from here.
Remember, I'm not Hawaiian.
I'm not Hawaiian.
I don't know when you're referring to that thing.
I don't know.
Selectively forgot.
That's great.
I can't.
On a, on a deeper level, similar question.
The last three decades with so many changing times, with so much of change in culture, in film, in television, all of that.
How do you still stay stable?
What's the inner, you know, message that you have for yourself?
Well, I've always thought, even in the beginning, that I needed to have a life outside of acting.
Okay.
Because when you're in your 20s, man, that's all you talk about.
You're with your friends and you're like, oh, it's all up all night talking about art and theater and blah, blah, blah.
And it's wonderful to be immersed.
But at the same time, I, I remember when I was working on that horrible Monterey thing where I'm interpreting, I don't know if you know Toshiro Mifune.
He is a, ah, I grew up watching Japanese movies.
And he was in all, all the films that we went to see.
I think he's got an Academy Award.
He's like the most acclaimed actor in Japan.
He came to work on that movie.
The star of the film was this television actor who was really bad, just going to say.
But he was very popular.
He was a cute, popular television actor.
Terrible.
Had a whole coterie of people around him carrying his stuff, holding umbrellas or anyway.
Adorable.
He was terrible.
And then Mifune came.
And Mifune, I don't even, nobody knew how he even got to set because he just came on his own.
He'd come in the van with us to set.
The other people all had drivers and they'd come to set.
He immersed himself in our world, in our life.
He ate after, you know, after we finished, we'd go to some ramen place and eat.
And I realized that part of his genius was being in life.
Yes.
And absorbing the world around him.
So I've always felt it was very important to have a life, be involved in other things,
have friends that are not actors or not in the industry, that we talk about, you know, politics and, I don't know, food, whatever.
Just having a life.
And that's, I think, been good to inform my acting.
I adopted a child at 47.
So I was a single mom to a child.
And, you know, boy, nothing makes you more in touch with life than a baby and a kid.
She's still, I mean, now she's my best friend.
And, oh, man, that, I became a better actor maybe because I was just so tired all the time.
You can't edit yourself.
You just go, what?
It might be our second fucking moment here in this episode then.
You're just like, fuck it, I'm going to give you what I got.
Yeah, exactly.
Just whatever.
What was that decision like?
Because that's becoming a single mom by choice and at 47.
And did you know what you were going to do with this baby and, like, your career and who's going to watch her and all of that?
Tell me, like, how did that come about?
I just had decided, you know, I had been in many relationships.
None of them worked out.
And at the time that I decided when I was, like, 40-something that I was at times a waste and I need to, if I want to be a mother, I have to do it now.
I didn't have anybody in my life.
So I didn't think that carrying a child with somebody's sperm was a great idea.
So I looked into adoption and it was possible.
I wasn't sure how easy it was to get a baby as a single mom.
But I got a baby, an infant.
She was a week old.
It took a while.
I mean, I had to take all the classes, which I think most parents should take a lot of classes, parenting classes.
When you adopt, you have to do a lot of work.
You know, when I was in these mommy groups, they didn't even know CPR.
I was like, I know shit.
It's just like when I went to Japan, came back, I was like, I can speak Japanese.
Don't mess with me.
So I was taking care of all of that stuff.
Plus, because she was adopted through the county, they gave you all these free services.
So I had like somebody come to the house, work with her all the time to keep her on track.
And I was getting so much.
I got free, my gym.
So she was able to do these classes.
I took advantage of everything.
I managed it all.
I didn't know how I would do auditions and work and stuff.
But, you know, people stepped up.
I got friends.
The week I got the baby, I got friends.
My agent goes, congratulations.
I'm like, oh, yay.
Oh, you got the show friends.
The show friends.
Yeah, yeah.
The show friends.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
But I had friends too.
I know.
So my friend was in the living room and she was like holding the baby.
And I said, I just got friends.
I don't know who's going to watch her.
What year was that?
I will.
Who did?
What year was that?
1990.
No, 2000.
2000.
2000.
Okay.
And the friend who was sitting in my living room was Miss Universe 1997.
She was my friend.
Never would have thought this girl is going to take care of my child.
And this woman goes, I'll watch her.
And I said, okay.
And she and my friend Alec Mapa.
I'm not sure if you know Alec.
He's another good friend of Rodney Toe.
And they watched her for that week.
Every day.
All day.
This is the thing that I think people don't understand about the industry and being a parent,
which I'll jump on my soapbox here for a minute.
Because I think we look at actors and celebrities like, oh, if they have children, then they have
like full-time child care.
They have their nanny comes to sit with them and all that stuff.
But that's like the top, top, top level.
Everyone else is working gig to gig.
So like you'll work a week on friends and then you're unemployed the next week.
Yeah.
And you don't have full-time child care.
And you're throwing it all together like haphazardly.
Do you have kids?
You know what I'm talking about.
Yeah.
Two.
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah.
For a long time, I was on the board of Moms in Film.
And this was one of our motions was to try to get onset child care.
We had a pilot program at Sundance.
We had a pilot program at South by Southwest where there was free child care there for the
filmmakers.
Because one of the other things is you go as an actor, as a director, a producer, you
actually make your film, but then it gets into festivals and you can't go because you have
young children at home or you're breastfeeding or anything like that.
And so for a long time, you're trying to get that pilot program off the ground because I
think onset child care is such a game changer for cast and crew who are working parents.
It's very difficult.
Yeah.
And remember during that time, like Penelope was maybe three or four and they asked me to
do the Sundance theater thing.
And I said, well, you know, I have this kid.
Can I bring my daughter?
And they went, no.
So I had to pass because they didn't have anything.
But there were some theaters I worked with Cornerstone and they provided a stipend for
baby, I mean, for child care.
So I was able to, you know, use somebody.
But I had, you know, a combination of friends and family and people that I paid and they turned
out to be actors that did this as their side gig was, you know, babysitting and they were
great.
But, you know, sometimes, you know, you get those calls so quick, I'd go with the stroller
to the audition and look around the room in the waiting room going, you look like a dad
in my head.
Do you mind watching her for a minute?
Here's her bottle.
If she wakes up, just give her the bottle.
I'll be right out.
And you go in and you do your thing and you come out and they're kind of startled, but
they go, okay.
Yeah.
Because they're parents and they understand.
That reminds me, I completely forgot about this.
When I was acting commercially a lot, you would get the very last minute call the day before
and everything was always in person at the time.
And I had small children and I would do the same thing.
Going in for a role for a young mom, there's going to be other young moms there and I'd pass
my baby off.
So then I started a little group on Facebook that was all LA actor commercial parents.
And we would just be like, anyone going to be at, you know, Joe Blake casting today?
Great.
I'll be there at two.
Let's watch each other's kids and we would like pair up that way.
Right.
How else are you going to do it?
You can't even afford a child care.
I did it a lot.
And what was funny is because the babysitters that were actors, sometimes I was working and
they had the baby and they had an audition and they totally, so they brought my daughter
to the audition because other people would say, oh, I met Penelope today.
And I'm like, my kid gets around.
I mean, it was fine.
I, you know, trusted them totally.
But it was hilarious because people were meeting my daughter without me.
Yeah.
I just think about all the work you've done while raising a young baby and a kid in this
world.
Like, it's really, really impressive.
And she's turned out okay.
I bet.
I mean, she's beautiful.
She's 25.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because she was born in 2000.
25.
She's great.
That's a good note.
I think the word you said originally about Amy, prolific, is appropriate in that sense.
Yeah.
I'm hearing in your story, too, like all of these times where someone just said, can you
do this?
And you just say yes without any thought and figure it out later, including being a parent.
You know?
It's like, it's time.
Yes.
I want to do this.
I'm driven enough to, I want to be a mom and I'll figure it out later.
Put me in the system.
Right.
Because there were a lot of naysayers going, how are you going to do that?
You know, you are so busy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And I said, I'll figure it out as I go.
Does that motivate you?
Yeah.
I mean, I think all the motivation, too, is, you know, when I started out in the business,
there was a lot of like people, because I'm so not like that castable type.
You know, I don't know.
I don't look Japanese enough.
I don't look this or that.
And I was just like, well, you know, it is what it is.
I remember thinking about changing my name to something more Asian, which most Asians
were changing their name to something less.
So good.
You know, I'd be on the list.
Gerald Tanaka, Susie Nakashima, Amy Hill.
You know, and I'd be like, oh, it's so confusing for people.
But then there are, you know, better minds.
We're like, Amy, that's your name for your life.
So that motivation, the people telling you no gives you that motivation.
Or it can be motivated.
I think so.
Well, also, I'm sure you've had this experience where you're just like, you know, this is
a hard business to be in, where you just think, is there anything else I can do?
And there isn't.
So you just keep telling.
Well, that reminds me, like, in particular right now and lately in this industry, a lot
of people feel like the industry is sort of broken and 90% of actors are unemployed at
any given moment.
What would you say to those people who are either considering just like leaving altogether or just
really having a hard time with the system?
Well, you know, I feel like it's easy for me to say, but I feel like do something.
Just do something creative.
Because now there's other avenues to do things.
But also, you know, if you're being creative, like if you're doing theater, it's not paying,
but you're doing theater and you're creating something.
Do that.
That's what happens.
You write.
You start writing stuff and then you get an acting job.
Then you're like, oh, I didn't finish the play.
I didn't finish the thing.
I'll get back to it later.
And then you start doing that again.
And then you get this voiceover.
You know, I mean, just keeping yourself actively creating something, whether it's on stage.
I don't know.
The universe has really been kind to me.
I've always been able to pay my bills.
I don't have high overhead.
Well, now I do a little bit because I live in Hawaii.
You know, I've never looked for money as much as experience being a creative person.
Sometimes when I'm not acting, I'm also making ceramics.
There you go.
I do other things that just keep my creative juices going.
You know, I don't know what people will do, but they can't shut themselves off and just
think I'm not making money and then go down that rabbit hole of, you know, what's the
point?
Because I know there are people who are leaving.
It's what's it called FICOR?
That thing when they leave, they're getting out of the union and doing non-union stuff,
which is kind of dangerous for us, I feel, because, you know, if I didn't have a union,
they would work you to the ground and not pay you anything, which happens in theater.
Right.
But I still love it.
But I do think your note to, like, keep creating whatever it is, especially with something like
ceramics or writing.
And I wrote poetry just for myself for so long.
Yeah, yeah.
And that is that kind of example of, like, doing the footwork and rowing the boat, even
though it's not necessarily something – we're not trying to lead that down a path that makes
money.
I don't know if you are not selling your ceramics, but, like, it's something that brings
you joy, I imagine.
No, I give it away.
I'm sorry.
I apologize to everybody.
I know.
You already got something right here.
I'm sorry.
I got another bowl.
Just pawning them off on people.
Yeah, I know.
But that's, like – that's the legwork.
And then, like you said, you'll – oh, all of a sudden the phone rings and you get a
job.
Yeah.
And it's not even, you know, necessarily directly related to whatever you're doing.
I just watched a movie last night here in the film festival, Jack Johnson.
Oh.
The boxer or the musician?
The musician.
Ah, okay.
He's the Hawaii guy.
Right.
So he was just, you know, he was just surfing and then he just, like, somehow fell into this
making movies with these, you know, little camera things, like, around his house.
And then he went to UC Santa Barbara and he was there for math.
And then he met this girl who said, you know, you should do something else more creative.
And then he fell into – he went to see something that was really a film, a really weird film.
And he went, oh, that's what I want to do.
I think changed his major, like, overnight into filmmaking.
And so then he made a surf movie, which hadn't been done, but he knew all the surfers and
he knew how to surf.
So he was, like, in the water making these surf movies and then he did that.
And then while he was traveling around the world, he was, like, writing songs, just on
his own, just hanging out, writing songs.
And then he put those songs in the movie.
And then Ben Harper saw him and fell in love with him.
And then he was touring with Ben Harper.
These are all an example of just being creative and saying yes, just following your heart.
And that's so important.
And he's such a good human.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He's another one who's connected to the world, connected to the earth.
I mean, he's created these foundations which serve children and the planet.
He's just, this is what I aspire to do.
But I think that is when the universe pays you back.
You don't know.
You're not going in expecting to be paid back.
But I think if you have this integrity with your life, it comes back, give you rewards in
some way.
And you'll always make a living somehow if you're a hard worker.
Yeah.
You got that right.
You got that right.
The proof is in the pudding in your case because you've been doing this with these kind of self
mantras of find this external life, this outside world, how it's still going to support and
correlate, even if it doesn't look like it is, to your work, your career itself.
You creating out here is also going to bleed into that because you're in this flow state that
gets you moving, right?
And then at the same time, you can see it proving itself in your career that you've had so far.
I also want to say, I have always been very happy not being recognized, mostly, because
then it creates this sort of false world where people you don't know are talking.
Anyway, but I'm happy when people talk to me.
I'm very nice and happy that they enjoy my work.
But I kind of enjoy being anonymous in the world so that I can sort of people watch and
be, you know, not recognized.
I remember when my daughter first started high school, I went to school and, you know, kids
that age all saw me on That's So Raven or whatever.
And they're like, oh, my God, you're Penelope's mom.
And I knew that I couldn't go.
I couldn't visit her at school too much because that would like ruin her little world.
Yeah, that's tough.
Yeah, I can only imagine.
Yeah, it is tough.
And with all of these roles that you've done over all of these years, you've worked with
some incredible people and like the list of people.
Who's on your dream list now to work with?
Well, there's so many actors out there that I would love to work with.
You know, any British actor is amazing to me.
I mean, I would because there's just lovely people.
They have no big ego.
They just do the work.
And they're really lovely, polite.
They seem like they don't have any weird idiosyncrasies.
They just do the work.
So British actors, a lot of them.
I would imagine it might be a little challenging for you to think of somebody because I just off
the top of my head, I comprise just the things that have always appealed to me from watching
you.
First off, black culture.
We saw you next Friday.
And that was just like, we still talk about you in that sense.
We still do.
Oh, I was here the other night and they said that they had spent time with Ice Cube.
And I was like, oh my God, he was the sweetest.
For a time, I was only being hired by African-American shows.
My wife and kids, the Hughleys.
I mean, it was like, because they know that the Asian community was always like right next
door to them.
You know, we were in their world where, you know, white showrunners didn't see us.
Unless we were maids or something.
Right.
Maybe a little foreign, pun not intended, just a little foreign to their psyche of the world
they're trying to build and whatnot.
Yeah.
So there's that one that was big for me.
And the Hughleys as well.
I love the Hughleys, seeing you in that as well.
They're a great people.
Everybody was so lovely.
Great people.
At some point, like I said before, Seinfeld, Frasier.
And then the one that really, like really appreciated is between the three of us, our producer, Foster
and I, we love the show Six Feet Under.
And you had this great scene with Peter Krause where you were just Mama Lisa, where you were
the psychic, you know.
You know, that was funny because we just talked while we were, you know, between takes.
He had a child who was almost the same age as mine.
And I had met him at another friend's house, but I didn't know he was a famous actor because
I don't watch TV or anything.
So he said he just moved to L.A. and he was an actor.
And I said, well, you know, basically it was like, good luck.
It's a tough business here.
Then he left with his kid because it was like a baby birthday party, you know, like his daughter,
his son was a year old.
So he leaves and my friends are like, you know who that was?
And I said, no, nice guy.
They said, that's Peter Krause.
He's on Six Feet Under.
And I went, oh, because I think he just got an Emmy like the week before.
Oh, right.
For Six Feet Under.
And I went, oh.
That's so good.
That's so good.
But another, he was at this baby birthday party.
He was in some child development class with my friends.
Just a regular, nice, sweet guy.
But, you know, that's my job.
Not knowing anybody.
Well, he's lovely because I was in the Ryan Murphy half initiative program.
And so I shadowed Joaquin Cedillo on 9-1-1.
And, you know, got to talk to a lot of the actors on that show.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And Peter Krause was just so kind and generous.
Yeah.
Like always trying to talk to me and chat with me.
And like everybody on that show was really quite lovely.
But I just remember him being just wonderful.
And like you said, totally just regular guy.
Just showing up.
You would never know.
You would never know.
Yeah.
He's great.
Oh, you want that?
Oh, try that acting thing.
Oh, good luck with you.
Well, he, you know, you really must have been a good luck charm for him post-mortem.
Because that Emmy was the week before, right?
No, I tell you.
I mean, some of the people that I, you know, the best people are always the ones that are
just normal.
Do the work.
Know what they're doing.
On time.
Those are the best.
Yeah.
They don't have any ego.
They're just there to work.
What's up?
Which is what I try to do.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
And do you set goals for yourself or do like manifestation or anything like that?
Or you just let things come to you at this point?
What's your, how do you see the next five years of your career going?
Well, I did a new solo show at the Hawaii theater here last summer.
So I'm reworking that.
So I'm figuring out how I want that one to be presented.
It's about getting older and kind of about getting in this business.
But in a comic way.
I mean, I'm around a lot of older people that really inspire me.
So I think now it's going to be character driven.
Anyway, haven't finished it yet.
Working on that.
But I'm doing it, I think, at East West Players maybe in the fall, in the spring or fall next
year.
So if I have a deadline, I'm really good about getting stuff done.
And Lilo and Stitch were shooting the sequel in September.
Oh, wow.
And then I've been on this show with Maggie Q.
I play her grandma on Ballard.
And we just wrapped season two.
So that might have another season or two, which is really good because it's easy.
And I might start making more stuff.
I have a lot.
I got my degree in fine arts.
You would never know.
So I have paints and ceramic stuff and a lot of little projects that I have planned.
So I'm going to do that.
I also have like 100 kimonos that I plan to cut up and make different things out of.
Nice.
I know how to sew.
So I always want to do things.
So I'm going to keep doing things.
And, you know, also writing.
And there's so much to do.
So much.
Great.
And we're so lucky that we have all these access to these things.
I couldn't agree more.
Yeah.
If it's beautiful.
Yeah.
We're very lucky in this time.
Oh, my gosh.
We are.
This has been a beautiful conversation.
Amy, thank you so much for joining us on the show.
Thank you.
Oh, you two are both.
Just light up the screen.
You're so delightful.
Oh, thank you.
Thank you very much.
We really appreciate you.
And we're just like, yeah, hopefully we'll see you in L.A. next time you come.
All right.
Thank you, Amy.
Thank you.
And as usual, everyone, please be kind to yourself.
If this episode spoke to you, take a moment and send it to someone else who might need it.
That's the best way to spread these conversations to the people who need them the most.
And if you want to keep exploring with us, make sure to follow Beauty in the Break wherever you get your podcasts.
We'll see you next time.
Beauty in the Break is created and hosted by Foster Wilson and Cesar Cardona.
Our executive producer is Glenn Milley.
Original music by Cesar + the Clew.