Born and raised in San Francisco, California, Wong's early childhood was busy and creative. He showed an early interest in classial music, learning to play the violin, and sung in a choir. A love of acting soon followed. He became involved in community theatre, learning not only about acting, bu also all aspects of putting on a show: from stage direction to lighting, from set design to set building, printing posters and selling tickets.
Wong directed a number of productions for the San Francisco Unified School District and continued his theatrical education when he went on to attend Lincoln High School.
Whilst at Lincoln, he continued to direct and act in a string of amatuer productions, including Grease.
He graduated in the Class of 1978. He is honoured on Lincoln High's Wall of Fame.
BD Wong went on to study at San Francisco State University, but dropped out in order to pursue his acting ambitions, first in New York City, then Los Angeles. It was whilst in LA that Bradd Wong began making small TV and film appearances.
Bradd Wong had just finished playing in a production of Mail at the Pasadena Playhouse when he received the script for a play called M. Butterfly. He liked the part, and flew East once more to audition for the part of Song Liling.
The audition period lasted a gruelling five months, but he won the part that would start a long creative association with its author, David Henry Hwang. Hwang suggested Bradd change his stage name to 'B.D.', to enhance the gender ambiguity of his role.
The role of Song Liling would become an icon of New York in the Eighties, and with it BD Wong entered the history books.
It was at this time of personal triumph that BD Wong met his long term partner, Richie Jackson, an agent and partner in the firm Innovative Artists.
Over the next decade, BD Wong's repertoire extended into a plethora of roles, breaking another record on the way: he was the first male to play the part of Peter Pan on stage. Remarkably, Wong began to break the stereotype, increasingly playing 'colour blind' roles that would otherwise have been played by white actors.
And then, on Sunday May 28 2000 at 9:42 PM, someone entered BD Wong's life that would change it forever. Jackson Foo Wong and his brother, Boaz Dov Wong, were born.
BD Wong would write of this life experience in his parenting memoire, Following Foo, and would later add two post-scripts: one, an anecdote about his relationship with his own father in Al Roker's book Big Shoes: In Celebration of Dads and Fatherhood, and then an account of his own coming out in Peter Trachtenberg's When I Knew.
You can read the full unedited version of BD Wong's contribution to When I Knew HERE.