Ma has also worked as a theatre director. A role in Eric Overmyer’s play, In Perpetuity Throughout the Universe, was also written specifically for Ma. Ma also starred in the film, Golden Gate (1993), written by Hwang. Ma is close friends with the playwright, David Henry Hwang, and has worked with him on several of his plays, including FOB, Yellow Face, Flower Drum Song, and The Dance and the Railroad, which was written specifically with Ma in mind. Ma says that he knew he wanted to pursue acting as a profession when he saw Mako in Stephen Sondheim’s 1976 Broadway musical, Pacific Overtures, for which Mako was nominated for a Tony Award. He studied with the Oscar and Tony-nominated Japanese-American actor, Mako Iwamatsu. He played the ‘Monkey King’ in an adaptation of the Beijing opera, Monkey King in the Yellow Stone King. His first theatre performance was in 1975 at an outdoor theatre in Roosevelt State Park. Ma attended Nassau Community College in Garden City, New York, where he studied acting. He honed his skills as an actor working in experimental theatre in New York. His love for acting started in a school production of Annie Get Your Gun in which he played Buffalo Bill. Ma was brought up in New York where his family ran an American-Chinese restaurant, called Ho Wah, located in Staten Island, where he also worked. In the late 1960s – when Ma was five years old – the family moved to the USA following political unrest in Hong Kong. Hong Kong-born Ma is the youngest of seven children.
He is a familiar face in mainstream Hollywood productions as well as independent cinema, where he has helped to champion and promote Asian American filmmakers and fight for greater representation in Hollywood.
Biography: Tzi Ma (pronounced ‘Tai Mah’) is a prolific actor working across stage, screen and television.
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