A Chinese-American actor who took small roles in films for decades had a secret past as a San Francisco gangster, his niece revealed in a new podcast.
Galen Yuen, who died in 2015, established himself in a minor role in the 1980s when he appeared alongside the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
But before he became a stage actor, Yuen was an established member of the Suey Sing gang who operated in Chinatown, exploited sex workers and carried a gun.
It was during this period of his life in the 1960s that Yuen battled his drug addiction and went to prison for falling into a life of crime.
The late actor’s unknown past recently gained new attention after his niece, journalist Maya Lin Sugarman, launched a podcast about his life.
Galen Yuen had established himself as a tough secondary role and even occasionally wrote screenplays during his on-screen career
Born to a Chinese immigrant family in Oakland in 1952, he encountered street gangs as a teenager from the era when criminal activity was rampant in the Bay Area.
According to his niece, Yuen allegedly acted as a pimp and was known for starting fights and using weapons to extort money from people.
After years of gang activity, Yuen was imprisoned in the early 1970s, and the Suey Sing was disbanded after one of its leaders was deported.
According to The San Francisco Standard, gang-related activity in Chinatown is believed to have been largely eliminated following the arrest of Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow a decade ago.
Despite this assumption, the norm says that the Suey Sing, Hop Sing, Hip Sing, Bing Kong and Chee Kung gangs are still prominent in the area.
After being released from prison, Yuen did not go to college, but found a job at an auto body shop while living with his mother in Oakland.
In 1985, Yuen had been watching the soap opera General Hospital when he noticed that the show’s plots occasionally involved Asian Americans.
This realization caused him to pursue a new life in Hollywood and move to Los Angeles to pursue a new life.
As a teenager, he became involved with street gangs of that era when criminal activity was rampant in the Bay Area’s Chinatowns
In the words of his sisters, he moved to the city to “get a fresh start” and that he was “running from something.”
Sugarman said her late uncle felt confident he could be more authentic than other actors on screen at the time because he had lived the life.
She said, “And he realized, ‘Wait, like everything I just experienced, I could do that on screen.’
When he moved to LA in 1985, he launched his new career and, according to his IMDB profile, he starred in 26 different TV and film productions.
Although most of his roles were small, he appeared alongside big Hollywood names, including Arnold Schwarzenegger in Kindergarten Cop.
Frustrated by his consistently smaller roles in films, he began writing screenplays in an attempt to create more opportunities for himself.
His dream came true in 1998, when a script he wrote was turned into the crime film ‘Crazy Six’.
The film starred Rob Lowe, Burt Reynolds, Ice-T and Mario Van Peebles and is set in a part of Eastern Europe after the fall of communism.
Galen Yuen and Werner Herzog in September 2005 on the set of Herzog’s film Rescue Dawn
After the film was whitewashed, Yuen decided to use his tenacity, which made him an effective criminal, to help fellow Asian Americans in the industry.
Yuen founded the Asian Talent Force agency and sought to help negotiate better roles and finances for fellow Asian Americans.
He then wrote Riot, a four-part TV film about the unrest that followed Rodney King’s verdict in 1992.
Later in his career, he also co-starred with Christian Bale in ‘Rescue Dawn’, directed by Werner Herzog.
Yuen never married or had children, and died in 2015 from a blood infection.