Margaret Cho
Margaret Moran Cho (born December 5, 1968) is an American comedian and actress. She is known for her stand-up routines, through which she critiques social and political problems, especially regarding race and sexuality. She rose to prominence after starring in the ABC sitcom All-American Girl (1994–95), and became an established stand-up comic in the subsequent years. As an actress, she has acted in such roles as Charlene Lee in It's My Party and John Travolta's FBI colleague in the action movie Face/Off. Cho was part of the cast of the TV series Drop Dead Diva on Lifetime Television, in which she appeared as Teri Lee, a paralegal assistant. For her portrayal of Dictator Kim Jong-il on 30 Rock, she was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series in 2012. In 2022, Cho co-starred in the film Fire Island, a portrayal of the LGBT Asian American experience in the eponymous gay village off the South Shore of Long Island. She has also had endeavors in fashion and music, and has her own clothing line. Cho has also frequently supported LGBT rights and has won awards for her humanitarian efforts on behalf of women, Asian Americans, and the LGBT community. Cho was born in 1968 to a family of Korean origin in San Francisco, California. Her paternal grandfather Myung-sook Cho, a Christian minister, worked for the Japanese as a station master during their occupation of Korea. When Japan withdrew from Korea at the end of World War II, he was denounced as a traitor by North Korea's Communist regime, and was forced to move with his family, including his son, her father Seung-hoon Cho, to South Korea. During the Korean War, Myung-sook ran an orphanage in Seoul. According to Margaret herself, she "grew up in the church." She was raised in a racially diverse neighborhood near the Ocean Beach section of San Francisco, which she described as a community of "old hippies, ex-druggies, burn-outs from the 1960s, drag queens, Chinese people, and Koreans. To say it was a melting pot – that's the least of it.
