Sitting in a movie theater as a child, watching Ali McGraw die beautifully in Love Story, Elyse decided she wanted to act. But that movie theater was in Saigon and she had no idea how she’d get to Hollywood. She arrived here eventually, after fleeing Vietnam as a war refugee. She then briefly aspired to be a Solid Gold dancer or FBI agent, but decided that acting would allow her to be everything.
Elyse's notable on-camera credits include Watchmen (the HBO series), Grey’s Anatomy, Better Things, a recurring role on Ava DuVernay’s Queen Sugar, and Spider-Man 2, for which she got her own trading card. On stage, she has performed lead roles for Mark Taper Forum P.L.A.Y., Ensemble Studio Theatre, East West Players, and Pacific Resident Theater.
Elyse is also active in voiceover work, narrating audiobooks and doing loop groups/ADR, in addition to commercials, podcasts, audio plays, and PSAs.
When not acting, Elyse stays busy as a dialect coach on major projects such as This Is Us, Watchmen, and For All Mankind. Since 2001, she's been a freelance book editor, known as The Edit Ninja, and loves being able to tell authors to change endings of books if she doesn't like them.
Elyse speaks fluent Vietnamese, conversational Spanish, and tourist-level Japanese. She can do basic American Sign Language. In her spare time, Elyse loves to travel, do jigsaw puzzles, eat, and dance to Bee Gees and ABBA music.