- Cho reached UC Berkeley by an unconventional route: after visiting friends there, he left another four-year college, attended Diablo Valley College for his sophomore year and then transferred to Berkeley. ([news.berkeley.edu](https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/11/04/then-now-next-actor-john-cho-on-finding-independence-and-identity-at-uc-berkeley/))
- His first play began when his roommate brought home a flyer for a student production. He later toured with East West Players in The Woman Warrior, which delayed his graduation slightly. ([news.berkeley.edu](https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/11/04/then-now-next-actor-john-cho-on-finding-independence-and-identity-at-uc-berkeley/))
- After earning his English degree, Cho taught seventh-grade English at Pacific Hills School in Los Angeles before his screen career took off. ([artshumanities.berkeley.edu](https://artshumanities.berkeley.edu/john-cho-english-96))
- Cho is also a singer who has performed with the band Viva La Union. ([artshumanities.berkeley.edu](https://artshumanities.berkeley.edu/john-cho-english-96))
- His debut middle-grade novel, Troublemaker, replaced an earlier plan for a lighter mystery after the pandemic, the George Floyd protests and rising anti-Asian violence changed his direction in 2020. ([publishersweekly.com](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-authors/article/88767-q-a-with-john-cho.html))
- During the 1992 Los Angeles unrest, the 19-year-old Cho was studying at Berkeley and feared that images of armed Korean shopkeepers would provoke greater hostility toward Koreans; decades later, Troublemaker sought to humanize people behind those images. ([latimes.com](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-02-26/john-cho-troublemaker))
- Cho has addressed UC Berkeley graduates more than once: he was the university’s Winter Commencement speaker in 2005 and returned as the English Department’s commencement speaker in 2023. ([commencement.berkeley.edu](https://commencement.berkeley.edu/history/))
- While filming Star Trek Into Darkness, Cho privately recorded video of the spacecraft sets because many of their meticulously designed details would never be visible in the finished movie. ([startrek.com](https://www.startrek.com/news/exclusive-interview-john-cho))
