Anna May Wong Becomes 1st Asian-American to Appear on US Currency

Anna May Wong, an American actress of Chinese heritage, will become the first Asian American to appear on US currency.

Starting next Monday, Wong’s image will be imprinted on quarters across the country. Being Hollywood’s first Asian American movie star, Wong acted in over 60 films across a decades-long career.

The coin is the fifth design of the American Women Quarters Program, which highlights female pioneers on coins.

Previous designs featured astronaut Sally Ride, activist and poet Maya Angelou, the first woman chief of the Cherokee Nation Wilma Mankiller and the suffragist Nina Otero-Warren.

She had an impressive representation of Asian people in Hollywood and challenged stereotypical depictions at a time when “yellowface” dominated the industry and the Chinese Exclusion Act was still law.

“Why is it that the screen Chinese is nearly always the villain of the piece, and so cruel a villain – murderous, treacherous, a snake in the grass,” Wong said in a 1933 interview with the Los Angeles Times. “We are not like that.”

Wong first began acting at the age of 14 and landed her first lead role three years later in "The Toll of the Sea".

Despite being considered one of the most beautiful female actors in Hollywood, the star was never cast as a romantic lead as laws prohibited people of different races from kissing on-screen, according to the New York Times.

In 1960, Wong was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She died a year later. In 2019, actor Lucy Liu became the second Asian American woman to earn a Hollywood star. Lucy lauded Wong as a “pioneer while enduring racism, marginalization, and exclusion”.

The director of the US Mint, Ventris Gibson, described Wong in a press release about the coin as “a courageous advocate who championed for increased representation and more multi-dimensional roles for Asian American actors”.