my first in an intermittent series of salutes to one of "those guys"

You likely don't know the name of the man in the above picture.

He's one of "those guys." You know, those actors who are familiar somehow, but you can't place the role, and definitely can't place the name.

James Hong is perhaps the greatest of "those guys" simply because he's been in a few things you may have seen over the years. Like the Chinese Restaurant episode of Seinfeld. Bones. Kung Fu Panda. The King of Queens. The X-Files. Big Trouble in Little China. Miami Vice. Blade Runner. Dynasty. The Dukes of Hazard. Dallas. Airplane! The Rockford Files. All in the Family. Chinatown. Hawaii Five-O. Mission Impossible. Perry Mason. Bonanza. Dragnet. Godzilla. (Yes, he dubbed a part in the U.S. release of the original Godzilla. Doesn't count for facial recognition, but still.)

According to Wikipedia he's had over 500 roles in his career, and a scan of Hong's IMDB page tells me that he has literally worked every year since 1955.

1955!

He has worked consistently for 55 years as an actor.

Other people have been acting for a long time, but they have gaps of a few years here and there; the phone stops ringing and it takes you a few years to get onto a daytime soap, or a sitcom, or if the mortgage is really late, a reality show.

Not James Hong. I've never seen a résumé anywhere near as consistent as his; a few credits each and every year, some in front of the camera, some voicework, some big roles, some small, some villians – but every year.

He seems to have been one of the few Asian actors that Hollywood casting directors of the '50s and '60s called on, year after year, like Jack Soo, Mako and Noriyuki "Pat" Morita, for the standard Asian roles: laundry owners, bellboys, restaurants owners, gangsters, Chinese Communists. And while Hollywood's caricatures may have slowly disappeared over the years (or not), the writing and the roles seem to have gotten a little more interesting for him, or at least provided some variety and consistent income while he did things like helping to found one of the first Asian-American theatre companies.

Today James Hong runs an acting school and is still working: he has two films in post-production, and one TV series shooting, while I write this.

That's pretty amazing. We should all be so lucky to do what we love that much, that consistently.