Rise to Fame
The Hangover came to him while his wife was in chemotherapy for stage 3 breast cancer. He almost turned it down. He took it, threw out the script, and improvised Mr. Chow into something that won him the 2010 MTV Movie Award for Best WTF Moment. Before any of that, he was a practicing internist at Kaiser Permanente, doing stand-up sets on nights off. He left medicine in 2006, and his film debut in Knocked Up led straight to the role that made him.
In the Spotlight
Seven-plus years on The Masked Singer turned him into a TV fixture, mostly on the strength of being the panelist who gets everything wrong. His "I know EXACTLY who this is!" is a running joke the show reportedly built an entire Wednesday programming block around. He hosts I Can See Your Voice on Fox, got his Hollywood Walk of Fame star in 2024, and keeps his California medical license renewed (currently valid through July 2026) as a reminder of where he started. The acting career is comfortable, not combustible.
Side Notes
During filming of The Hangover, he improvised Vietnamese phrases into Mr. Chow's scenes as private jokes for his wife. He and Tran reportedly met at a hospital. Both are physicians. They have twin daughters. He was a Cameron Crazie at Duke before medical school, and he still operates more like a doctor than a performer: methodical, type-A, with an active license he's never let lapse.