Jimmy O. Yang Chinese Actor Born 1987 in British Hong Kong

Early life

Jimmy O. Yang was born in Hong Kong on 11 June 1987. Both of his parents came from Shanghai before settling in Hong Kong. When he was 13 the family emigrated to the United States and made their home in Los Angeles, where relatives were already living, mainly so that he and his brother Roy could get a better education. He began at John Burroughs Middle School in the eighth grade and went on to Beverly Hills High School.

He studied economics at the University of California, San Diego, and completed his degree in 2009. The speaker at his commencement was Mike Judge, who would later run the series that gave Yang his breakthrough. After a brief internship at a financial consulting firm in Beverly Hills, he declined a permanent offer and stayed in San Diego, taking odd jobs such as selling used cars while he practised stand-up for free at a local comedy club. He met his mentor there, the comedian Sean Kelly, who managed the venue.

Career

Yang's first stand-up set came at 21, under the name "Lowball Jim", at a club in North Hollywood. After returning to Los Angeles he registered with Central Casting and online casting sites, took acting classes and eventually signed with the Vesta Talent Agency. His television debut was an episode of the CBS comedy 2 Broke Girls in 2012, and in 2014 he made his first late-night stand-up appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show. He also played Tang-See in the ninth season of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, appeared in Criminal Minds and voiced a role in the video game Infamous Second Son.

His best-known early part was Jian-Yang on the HBO series Silicon Valley, which ran from 2014 to 2019. He first came in as a guest for three episodes and was promoted to a regular for the second season. In 2016 he played Dun Meng, a Chinese immigrant carjacked during the events portrayed in Patriots Day, his first dramatic film role; his father, Richard Ouyang, played the character's father. In 2018 he played Bernard Tai in Crazy Rich Asians, directed by Jon M. Chu. That same year he published a memoir, How to American: An Immigrant's Guide to Disappointing Your Parents, with a foreword by Mike Judge, and toured with a stand-up show named after it.

Yang was cast as Dr. Chan Kaifang in the Netflix series Space Force in 2019. In 2020 he appeared opposite Ryan Hansen in both Like a Boss and Fantasy Island, released a month apart, and the stand-up special Good Deal arrived on Amazon Prime Video that May. He starred opposite Nina Dobrev in the Netflix film Love Hard (2021), his first romantic lead. Further film roles include Me Time and Easter Sunday (both 2022), 80 for Brady (2023) and Roofman (2025). A second special, Guess How Much?, was released on Prime Video in May 2023, and in August of that year he voiced the title character of the animated film The Monkey King. In 2024 he played the lead, Willis Wu, in the Hulu series Interior Chinatown. His credits listed for 2026 include Rock Springs.

Crazy Rich Asians, one of the films he appeared in, earned a worldwide box office of about $239 million. His video channel on YouTube, which focuses on cooking, had around two million subscribers in June 2025.

Personal life

Yang speaks English, Shanghainese, Cantonese and Mandarin. He became a United States citizen in 2015.