Michael Paul Chan

Born in California, Michael Paul Chan grew up in Richmond and decided to turn to acting while studying at San Francisco State University. Trained at the American Conservatory Theater, he made his stage debut in 1977, in The Year of the Dragon , and in parallel began to tour for film and television, making appearances in The Solitaire by Michael Mann and in episodes of Hooker and CHiPs.

In 1985, his career really took off thanks to Richard Donner's cult film The Goonies, in which the actor lends his features to Mr. Wang, Data's father. He then continued with many small roles in series such as West Coast, The law is the law, Welcome to Alaska, or The Favorite Years, and gives the answer to David Carradine and Brandon Lee in the TV movie Kung Fu: The Movie (which follows on from the series of the same name).

In the early 1990s, audiences found him in the credits of several feature films, including Between Heaven and Earth by Oliver Stone, Maverick, which marked his reunion with Richard Donner, and Chute libre, which offered him a memorable scene in which his character of Korean grocer is victim of the outburst of anger of William Foster, played by Michael Douglas.

After a regular role in 1994 in the soap opera Valley of the Dolls, stopped after only a few weeks of broadcasting, Michael Paul Chan continues the appearances on the small screen (Babylon 5, Arabesque, Profit, JAG, La Vie à cinq) then joined, in 1999, the cast of the animated program The Stubbs, created by Eddie Murphy, in which he lends his voice to Jimmy Ho, one of the inhabitants of the building whose hero, Thurgood Stubbs, is the concierge. The actor, also seen in the skin of Inspector Ron Lu in the first and only season of Los Angeles: Homicide Division in 2002, does not cease to shine on the big screen, as evidenced by his participation in US Marshals, Revelations, The Glass Prison, Spy game, spy game, alongside Robert Redford and Brad Pitt, as well as Comme il vous plaira and Americanese,

Also noticed, on the television side, for his interpretation of judge Lionel Ping, who is dealing with the Bluth family, in several episodes of the crazy comedy Arrested Development, Chan is best known to viewers fond of detective series thanks to the role of Inspector Mike Tao (past lieutenant), which he has held since 2005, and this for seven years, in The Closer: LA Priority investigations, with Kyra Sedgwick, and which he has been playing since 2012 in his spin-off, Major Crimes, carried by Mary McDonnell.

Jeremiah Dunand