Chipping at the Walls: Working In Hollywood

By Harrison

I grew up Chinese-Canadian in the 1970s. This was not the Canada you might think of – liberal, progressive, gay marriage and legal pot. It was still very proudly a member of the British Commonwealth, where racism was often covertly structured with thick glass ceilings and walls that needed a lot of chipping to make even the smallest crack.

When I was a kid, I was a bit of a ham, loved to write, was addicted to movies and thought I’d make a great actor. My family drove every weekend to Toronto to watch Chinese kung fu flicks. But the only Asian face I saw on television was Mr. Sulu – and I knew that Star Trek had been cancelled. There were no Asian Americans on the A-list, and there were no Asians charting on Billboard. Not too encouraging.

I hit my first glass wall in high school (I was one of only three Asian students) when I wanted to audition for Fiddler on the Roof. Mr. Taylor, the theater arts teacher, stopped me before I could even get on stage and said that he didn’t think there were too many Asians in Tsarist Russia. Later, my guidance counselor reacted with surprise when I told him that I wanted to major in journalism. He said, “Harrison, you know no one in Canada is going to hire a Chinese person to write English.”

I pursued a marketing career in Toronto, but I still felt frustrated. My personal life revolved around my love of movies. I was discouraged because there was no way to combine my passion into a career.

One fateful evening, I went with my friend, Laurie, to go see Newsies which was playing at a second-run theater in Toronto. She wanted to see the Disney bomb that had been touted as the first live action musical in over 30 years. She loved the movie. I hated it. We were both inquisitive and looked up its impressive young star – Christian Bale – and found that he was the English schoolboy from one of my favorite Spielberg movies, Empire of the Sun.

In a strange turn of events, I made contact with Christian, and soon after, he invited me to move to Los Angeles to work on his career. I became his publicist, his Internet marketer, I took care of his pets, his house, his ailing father, I read his scripts, cooked meals, washed his car. Initially, I loved every second of this new phase in my life because I was in Hollywood and working hard building my friend’s career.

Bale’s temper is now infamous and well-documented, so suffice it to say, after almost a decade, we were done professionally. I had earned a reputation in Hollywood though. I was the real life Alfred to Bale’s Bruce Wayne. And oddly enough, I was told that I was the inspiration for the character “Lloyd” in the HBO show, Entourage, a show I’ve never watched.

I believe it was humorist Sandra Tsing Loh who declared that if you haven’t made it in Hollywood by the time you’re 40, you should either open a yoga studio or move to Austin. Good advice, Sandra! I’m done chipping directly at the glass wall, and am taking aim from a different angle.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Harrison Cheung worked for Christian Bale as publicist, marketer and personal assistant for almost a decade.  He is the author of the book, Christian Bale: The Inside Story of the Darkest Batman (BenBella Books), available May 29, 2012.