Dante Basco

“You have to understand, when you're 15 and you're doing this Steven Spielberg movie with megastars - Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman, Julia Roberts - you know you want to be cool. I don't know how cool I'm going to look with my belly button out!”

“Rufio's a great iconic character for a certain generation and definitely something I'm always associated with, proud to be associated with which is cool.”

“I mean, he's one of the greatest characters I've gotten to play over my career, so there's a little bit of me in Zuko and a little bit of Zuko in me.”

“I guess my voice is more recognizable than I know!”

“Depictions of race have changed so much since, like, the '50s, where white people just played every race. But the pendulum swings both ways: I'm Filipino-American. If I had to wait for a Filipino role to come out to get work, I couldn't eat. There are barely any roles out there.”

“The most fascinating thing for me is that 'Peter Pan' is a fairy tale, but now, this Filipino kid is a part of the folklore. Can you imagine telling the story of 'Sleeping Beauty' or 'Cinderella,' and all of a sudden there's a Filipino kid in there after all these years?”

“I come from a traditional media generation, you know? I'm like the last generation of that. And so the whole world has changed, ultimately. Coming into social media, Twitter, Facebook - I mean, the first social media I ever had was Tumblr.”

“I'm a poet, first and foremost as a writer. That's who I am. That's what I'm most comfortable writing.”

“My mother always kept us involved in various types of art.”

“But being Asian American, a lot of Asian American guys come up to me who are in interracial relationships and they tell me, 'Growing up my partner had a big crush on you and so you're probably one of the reasons why she married me, so thank you.'”

“The actor's life isn't for everyone, but it has been extremely rewarding to me.”

“I look for us - people of color in Hollywood, to create more stories as writers, directors and filmmakers, creating more opportunities for ethnic actors. At the end of the day, we have to be the ones giving jobs and telling the stories, not just waiting to be hired.”

“I come from a big family of brothers and sisters and family dramas and honor and dishonor.”

“I've actually had a great career in Hollywood. I've been a working actor my whole life.”

“The first time I walked onto the set of Neverland, it was like walking into another world. They built the sets extra strong, so we were allowed to play on them when we weren't filming. It was cool!”

“As far as geek culture, I didn't grow up in the comic con geek culture lane, then I started doing Comic Cons seeing the impact of it. The character, Rufio living on.”

“I grew up in a pretty rough neighborhood, Paramount, California, outside of L.A., like near Compton, that's where I'm from.”

“My first professional acting role was a small part in a television series called 'The Wizard.' I later had the opportunity to work on Michael Jackson's Moon-walker music video.”

“I was 15 when I did Rufio and now I've been Rufio for more of my life than I haven't been. Wrestling with that is always interesting because you don't want to be fully defined by it, but at the same time it's you, and you don't want to be ashamed of you either.”

“Working with Robin Williams, and Bob Hopkins, and Dustin Hoffman and you're talking about 'gods,' really, in our industry. You look at legends everyday. It was so impactful to me as a young artist.”