American television and stage actress/screenwriter Zoë Carroll Chao is primarily known for her role as Isobel in Strangerand Zoe in After partyMost recently, in 2023, she appeared in romantic comedies Your place or mine (like Minka) and Someone I used to know (Ramona). So, Zoë has been working in this industry since 2006. And she has certainly had a lot of support, especially from her parents, over the years. Who are they? Now we will explore this in the rest of the article.
Who are Zoë Chao’s parents?
Zoë Chao grew up in a family of visual artists. That’s right, both her parents were visual artists, which we’ll discuss later.
Zoë was born in Providence, Rhode Island in September 1985 to Bruce Chao and Sue Carrol. Read on and learn about these people individually and together.
Meet Sue Chao, Zoë Chao’s mother
Zoë Chao’s social media activity shows that she loves both her parents very much. She is often seen appreciating them in her posts.
Speaking of Zoë’s mother in particular, people always tell her that “she is her mother”.
Zoë’s mother, unlike her husband Bruce, a second-generation Chinese American, is believed to be of Irish descent. And Zoë is described as half Chinese and half Irish.
Sue Chao was born in May 1946. So she is 76 years old in 2022.
Sue Chao is a visual artist, unlike her husband, she does not reveal details about her career.
Following in her parents’ footsteps, Zoë always planned to work at an art gallery after college. But her destiny had something else in mind for her. And her parents supported her anyway. Zoë once shared in an IG story how her mom helped her audition.
Zoë graduated from the Wheeler School in 2004, received a BA in Art History from Brown University and a Master of Fine Arts from the graduate acting program at UCSD.
Zoë before taking on career-changing roles like Stranger Since 2017, she has had many supporting “best friend” roles.
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Does Sue Chao use Instagram?
As of February 16, 2023, Sue Chao is not on Instagram. However, she has previously shared glimpses of her life on Facebook under the handle ‘Sue Carroll’.
Meet Bruce Chao, Zoë Chao’s father
On Instagram @zchao, we’ve seen Zoë Chao playing around as a child with her dad and other members of her dad’s side of the family.
It appears that Zoë’s father, Bruce Chao, is Chinese. His mother (Zoë’s grandmother) moved to Michigan from China when she was 7 years old, during the period before the Cultural Revolution.
Bruce, long ago, was born into the family of Wu-Wai Chao and Phebe Shih Chao. And he grew up with two older brothers, Matthew and Stephen Chao.
Bruce Chao was born in 1948. So he is 74 years old in 2022.
As an artist, Bruce Chao’s sculptures have been exhibited across the United States in spaces such as the Smithsonian Museum of Art, PS1 in New York, the Mississippi Museum of Art, and the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha. Internationally, he has exhibited at the Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Sapporo, Japan, and Fort Asperon in Leerdam, the Netherlands, among others. He seems to have had a fairly busy career from the 1970s through the 1990s.
An MFA graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, he received grants and fellowships including the George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation Fellowship, the NEA U.S./Japan Creative Artist Fellowship, several NEA Individual Artist Fellowships, as well as a fellowship from the Ohio State Council on the Arts.
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Does Bruce Chao use Instagram?
Bruce Chao is not on Instagram or any other social media platform at the time of writing. However, he does occasionally appear on his wife and children’s social media pages.
Related FAQs
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Are Zoë Chao’s parents still together?
Zoë Chao’s parents are probably still living together and married at the time of this writing.
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Where do Zoë Chao’s parents live now?
As of February 2023, Zoë Chao’s parents reside in Rehoboth, a historic town in Bristol County, Massachusetts.
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How many children do Zoë Chao’s parents have?
Zoë Chao’s parents have another child and she is Zoë’s younger sister, Maia Chao. She is 30 years old as of March 24, 2022, making her much younger than her younger sister who is 37 years old as of September 19, 2022.
On January 23, 2023, Malia, on her IG @maia.pologies, shared that for a while, she had been working with her mother and sister to turn her grandmother’s unpublished manuscript into a book. She announced to everyone that the project, which they started in 2020, had finally come to fruition.
Maia, like her parents, is a visual artist. Her online bio specifically describes her as an interdisciplinary artist working collaboratively in performance, video, sculpture, and social practice.
Maia holds a BA in Anthropology from Brown University and an MA in Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design. As of this writing, she is a 2022-23 Pew Research Fellow and a full-time Professor of Social Practice at the Maryland Institute College of Design in Baltimore.