However, even in the middle of the whirlwind of the show’s popularity, Nguyen knew it would be difficult to sustain that level of success given the average parts being offered to Asian American actors at the time.

“I enjoyed every minute of it, but maybe because of the way I was raised, my background, I sort of had this innate understanding that it wasn’t going to last forever,” he said. “I was expecting not to work for a little bit after ‘Jump Street.’ I saved up a lot of money, and I lived very modest. I was prepared to be unemployed for a little while, but it turned out to be two years, which seemed like an eternity.”

Nguyen landed his next significant role on the show “VIP” from 1998 to 2002, which he called “cheese, but good cheese.” He played a stuntman on the campy show starring Pamela Anderson, which was a lifeline at a time.

“You find yourself on another series that goes three, four seasons, and it’s kind of like winning the lottery,” he said.

The end of “VIP” coincided with a dark period in which Nguyen almost called it a career as he faced personal and professional struggles. His wife at the time, Angela Rockwood, was involved in a crash on a California freeway in 2001 that killed fellow actor Thuy Trang from “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” and left Rockwood a quadriplegic.

Nguyen was trying to support her while at the same time staying afloat professionally.

“I hit the bottom professionally, and personally I was pretty devastated with what was going on in my personal life,” he said.

It reached a point where Nguyen stopped acting and got a job at a warehouse.

Nguyen’s friend director Ron Yuan threw him a lifeline when he reached out to Nguyen about auditioning for a part in the 2005 Cate Blanchett movie, “Little Fish.” Yuan had to give Nguyen’s information directly to the casting director because Nguyen didn’t even have an agent anymore.

Nguyen was working his regular job and wondering if he wanted to act again, but Rockwood told him he should give it a shot. He landed the part, and the next thing he knew he was back in the game.

“That was the movie that really ignited my love for acting again,” he said.

The downside was that the movie was barely seen in the theaters, which worried Nguyen. It led him to make another abrupt life decision to return to his native Vietnam to do a movie called “The Rebel.” He ended up moving to the country of his birth permanently, starting his own production company, and getting into directing.

“Hollywood certainly wasn’t going to give me an opportunity to direct, so Vietnam is where I was able to sort of sharpen my skills and learn,” he said.

“The fact that Dustin has made it work in Vietnam and Hollywood, I think it’s a career path we really haven’t seen,” Feng said.

Nguyen has since returned to Hollywood after initially thinking his life was settled in Vietnam, where he married Vietnamese actor Bebe Pham in 2012 and started a family.

His latest television role goes against many of his previous roles, as he plays a straight-up villain named Zing on “Warrior.” It’s the type of martial arts-heavy role he might have thought twice about accepting in his younger days while worrying about stereotypes, but director Justin Lin and the Asian representation on the show drew him back to Hollywood. The show is a far cry from the sets Nguyen worked on early in his career.

“If you did a guest star appearance back in those days, every successful TV show always had what we termed ‘the Chinatown episode,’” Nguyen said. “Somehow, they’ve got to solve some crime in Chinatown, and in Chinatown, you’ve got to have some Asian people, so the lead guest star would be Asian and then maybe you got like another smaller guest star. But usually back then, you’re one of the only Asians there.”

He noted that the success of movies like “Crazy Rich Asians” and “The Farewell” helped change the climate in Hollywood to one in which a majority-Asian cast and director is seen as viable by the studios and streaming services holding the purse strings.

While Nguyen’s career shows the strides Asian and Asian American actors and directors have made since his days on “21 Jump Street,” the anti-Asian violence and hate that has swept across the U.S. during the pandemic over the last two years has starkly contrasted that progress.

“Particularly last year when all the anti-Asian hate crimes started happening, it was surreal to me,” Nguyen said.