I recall Lucy Liu was kinda big in the early 2000's after a few years on Ally McBeal. The 2 Charlie Angel films, Shanghai Noon, Ballistic Ecks vs Sever (terrible film, but hey it's a big film), Kill Bill and Lucky Number Slevin. After that, her film roles dried up and she started doing that procedural cop show. Not too bad overall.
But what about Asian-American leading men? It seems the only successful ones tend to be doing tv series like Aziz-Ansari or Randall Park. There was Kal Penn and John Cho who had roles in films/tv, but usually in supporting roles. I still don't get how Cho didn't get better roles. There was also Sung Kang in the Fast&The Furious franchise. He seemed to have decent enough talent and could get female fans into him. And yet, no roles to take advantage of that.
Now there's Steven Yeun. 6 seasons on The Walking Dead. He's been doing a bunch of indies since he left the series. Mayhem, Okja, Sorry To Bother You. He def seems like he has the talent (and fanbase) to push higher onto the Hollywood ladder.
And we have "Crazy Rich Asians" soon. Will this have an effect on Asian-American talent?