Margaret Cho
Comedian, Actress, Activist
YEAR INDUCTED
2022
CATEGORY
Film & Television
Margaret Cho is a comedian, actor, musician, artist, and activist recognized for her work on anti-racism, anti-bullying, and gay rights campaigns. The five-time GRAMMY and Emmy nominee is known for her groundbreaking one-woman show, I’m The One That I Want, made into both a best-selling book and feature film. In 2017, Rolling Stone magazine named her one of 50 Best Stand-Up Comics. Cho was born in 1968 to Korean parents in San Francisco. In her twenties, after winning a comedy contest to open for Jerry Seinfeld, she moved to Los Angeles. Among many honors, Cho was the recipient of the first-ever Best Comedy Performance Award at the Asian Excellence Awards, First Amendment Award from the ACLU of Southern California, and the Intrepid Award from the National Organization for Women. Los Angeles Pride has bestowed her with a Lifetime Achievement Award for her lasting imprint on the LGBTQ community.
HALL OF FAME ESSAY
"My family experienced such intense racism coming to San Francisco from Korea in 1964 that they’ve never discussed and I think all of these incidents now bring up so much shame, so much heartache, so much past trauma. We’re learning unity faster. We’re learning that we have to sort of let go a lot of the biases we’ve had over other Asian countries and identities. Which exist in your interracial things happening within your Asian community all the time. So that needs to be dismantled so we can move forward as a group as we’re all considered the same here. We’re all the same.”
Margaret Cho, Asian Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony 2022
“I’m not going to die because I failed as someone else. I’m going to succeed as myself.”
– MARGARET CHO
