Award-winning actor BD Wong discussed his life and career as a gay Asian-American artist at the Luckman Fine Arts Complex.

Wong has been in films and shows such as “Jurassic Park,” “Mulan,” “Law and Order: SVU” and “Mr. Robot.” His lecture and Q&A on Saturday was free to attend for the Cal State LA community.

He started the talk, not about his career, but about his family history and upbringing. Born into a Chinese-American family in San Francisco, Wong recalled as a young child wearing towels around his waist, dancing and pretending they were ball gowns.

“I was the gayest child you ever saw,” he reflected.

Wong discovered his passion in theater while in high school, but it wasn’t long before he said he encountered prejudice in entertainment. There were two characters that were racial caricatures of migrant Chinese workers in his school’s production of “Anything Goes.” Wong said he was casted by his teacher in one of those roles.

“My own sense of who I was, was at complete odds with this other person’s perception of who I was,” he said. “I got very upset by this. I was very insulted.”

Wong said he enrolled in college only to feel excluded by the theater program. He dropped out, but continued pursuing his acting career.

Eventually, Wong received a script whose author was of Asian descent – something he had never seen before. He felt the script validated him as an Asian-American man and appreciated how the play dealt with the media and cultural misrepresentation.

The aspiring actor landed the desired role, making his Broadway debut in “M. Butterfly.” It’s the story of a French diplomat falling in love with a Chinese opera singer. The singer, played by Wong, is secretly a man who spies on the diplomat.

Wong said the role changed his life.

“It rearranged the molecules in my body when it came to the way I felt about myself as an Asian-American person,” he said. “I was undervaluing my sense of my own culture and my own value as a person of color.”

Despite the role winning him prestigious awards, he lamented over never being cast as a leading man.

According to a September report from the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, Asian characters accounted for 8.2 percent of speaking or named characters in the top 100 fictional films of 2018. To add perspective, in 2007, the percentage was 3.4 percent.

While Wong embraced his racial identity because of “M. Butterfly,” he said, at the time, he was not ready to come out as a gay man publicly.

“I was out to my parents and I was out to my boyfriends – that’s always important,” he said, eliciting laughter.

At some point, Wong realized he wanted to have a baby with his partner at the time. Through surrogacy, he was expecting identical twins. However, his sons were born 12 weeks prematurely – and only one survived.

His surviving child was in intensive care for three months. During that time, Wong wrote emails to friends and family to cope with his hardship. The emails were shared and spread out, and eventually reached a thousand people, including a book agent, according to Wong.

The agent and Wong collaborated to turn the emails into a book: “Following Foo: The Electronic Adventures of the Chestnut Man.” As he prepared to share his story on the book tour, an epiphany struck Wong.

“I realized I’m coming out,” he said. “I was able to say, ‘See!? It’s really great to be gay and good positive things can come from being gay. We’re people too.’”

He compared the experience to when he embraced his racial identity because of “M. Butterfly.” This time, he felt ready to be open and proud of his sexual orientation.

Following his lecture, Wong answered several questions from the audience including from young people of Asian descent trying to enter the entertainment industry.

“Lectures like these are just as important as art and I feel like they are a form of art,” said Cal State LA alumnus Anthony Karambelas. “Art is about being provocative and eliciting thoughts and reactions.”During the lecture, Wong shared that his surviving son is now a college freshman. He asked if there were any freshman in the audience. To those who raised their hands, he said, “Call your parents, please. Call them tonight. Then, call them tomorrow too.”