Gran Torino has a cast of Hmong American actors, 10 in all, but only one of those actors had ever acted in a film capacity prior.
Initially it was thought that some well known Asian American stars would be picked but Clint Eastwood wanted actual members of the Hmong community to star, who could speak real Hmong, rather than pretend to be Hmong. The new stars ranged from very young Bee Vang (who plays Thao) to Thao’s grandmother played by 61 year old Chee Thao, who had no formal education.
Bee Vang himself was thinking of getting into pre-med before the auditions. Perhaps his inexperience of youth and being quite a bit shorter than Eastwood made a difference in the impression we got – the vulnerability of Thao to the neighbourhood gang.
Interestingly, the script was all in English so a lot of the Hmong script was improvised, and some of the Hmong actors explained it would probably be hard to translate back to English. You can read some of the thoughts of the actors who got the roles in this link below:
Of course, the filming was not without controversy, with some saying the cultural representation of Hmong was inaccurate and may lead to poor image of the Hmong. Others saw this as a great opportunity for recognition of the Hmong community. Certainly for many of these actors, it gave them confidence to consider a career in acting.
Overall this cast of largely amateur actors put together a rather memorable film, especially lovable Bee.