Best known for playing Harold Lee in the Harold & Kumar stoner film franchise and Captain Sulu in the Star Trek movie reboots, John Cho has been a professional actor for more than 25 years. He’s starred in dozens of movies and TV shows, and even earned an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Male Lead for his performance in the 2018 indie thriller, Searching. But for all his Hollywood success, the actor keeps a pretty low profile when it comes to his personal life. Here’s everything you need to know about John Cho’s wife and the family they share.
How Did John Cho And His Wife Meet?
John Cho met his wife, fellow actress Kerri Higuchi, when they were both students at the University of California, Berkeley. The couple didn’t start dating until a number of years late, when they both moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting careers. Cho says that he was extremely impressed with Higuchi’s self-confidence and poise, which were qualities he lacked when he first got into show business.
“My wife was confident in a way that I was very attracted to,” the Identity Thief star said in a 2015 interview with Glamour magazine. “She knows who she is. I knew nothing about that. I was so unsettled at that age and so scatterbrained. It’s beautiful when you see a person who’s self-assured and knows who she is.”
In contrast, Cho says it took him many years (and a number of failed relationships) to find himself. “Man, I was a mess when I was younger,” he admitted to Glamour. “I shouldn’t have really started dating till I was 35 because I feel like I wasn’t formed until I hit 30. I was just an idiot for most of my 20s.”
After a number of years of dating, Cho and Higuchi married in 2006. The pair tied the knot in Northern California on New Year’s Eve, in a ceremony Cho says he’ll never forget. “It was a big deal! It’s like putting on a one night only show,” the actor said in his interview with Glamour. “You’re the producer and director and the star, so you’re busy. And you’re the host, so you’ve got a lot going on. I’d like to do it again.”
Higuchi’s Hollywood Career
While Kerri Higuchi may not be as well-known as her husband, she has an impressive acting resume of her own. She’s appeared on a handful of popular TV shows, including ER, Without a Trace, and Parks and Recreation. She also had a recurring role on Grey’s Anatomy as OB/GYN Dr. Elizabeth Chen, and she wrote and directed the 2005 film Mr. Isaac. Most recently, she appeared on an episode of Scandal in 2015.
Their Life Together
Though Higuchi had no problem getting acting gigs, she decided to step away from the spotlight when she and Cho had kids. Currently, she’s a stay-at-home mom to the couple’s two children: a son born in 2008 and a daughter born in 2013. While the couple keeps the details of their family life to themselves (we don’t even know the names of their kids!), Cho has said that becoming a dad completely changed his life.
“It’d be easier to say how being a dad hasn’t changed me,” he explained in a 2022 interview with the Independent. “Having a kid is a total alteration of your life and your values. It feels like everything gets rearranged and put in its proper place inside you.”
The Don’t Made Me Go actor also says that at the end of the day, being a dad is the most important role he’ll ever play. “If you were to ask me for one word to describe who I am, ‘father,’ is how I would describe myself. That’s who I am. It’s the biggest part of my identity. That’s how I think about myself,” he said in a 2022 interview with Fatherly.