The script told him to wail like Bruce Lee and to get into a martial artist's fighting stance. But when it came time for Karl Hahn, a New York actor, to shoot his scene, he refused because he thought it perpetuated a stereotype about Asian men.

Instead, he suggested to the director the idea of giving his fictional adversary a cool glare. It worked.

"You're not allowing the perpetuation" of a stereotype "that's going to harm our image," he said later in an interview.

Presented with the same script, other Asian-American actors might not have been so vocal, either because they didn't see anything wrong with it or because they feared losing the role.

Or do they do what Hahn did and hope that directors see their point?

The most recent statistics compiled by the Screen Actors Guild reveal that 2.6 percent of all television or theatrical roles went to Asians or Pacific Islanders, even though they make up 4 percent of the general population.

The roles for Asian-American actors are diversifying, however. Gone are the days when the only screen roles available were for restaurant owners, geisha girls and gangsters.

These days Asian-Americans are playing doctors (Ming-Na Wen on "ER"); lawyers (Lucy Liu on "Ally McBeal"); and action heroes (Dustin Nguyen on "V.I.P.").

Ester Chae, a Los Angeles-based Korean-American actress, recently played a Korean-speaking LAPD officer in the new television drama, "The Shield."

In a scene in an interrogation room, she had a terse exchange with a white male officer who failed to understand that his way of questioning a non-English speaking Korean woman would only cause her to clam up. "She's standing up and saying you don't know how to ask the question," Chae said in an interview.

But as encouraging as non-traditional scenes like that are, Hahn and many of his colleagues say the industry "hasn't let go of the stereotypes entirely."

Asian-American men are typically portrayed as humorless, feeble-minded or lacking assertiveness, said Hahn, who has been landing small roles in films over the last four years. "We're like empty vessels with no emotion," he said.

Even Lucy Liu's character, Ling Woo, was criticized by some observers for perpetuating a stereotype that Asian females are dragon-ladies.

Making the decision to accept or reject such roles does not come easily for some Asian-American actors, who are forced to weigh their values against whether they're going to be able to put food on the table that week.

When Zoie Lam, a New York actress, started acting in the mid-1980s, she refused to accept roles that required her to fake an Asian accent or ones that portrayed Asian females in a stereotypical way.

Her agent, Jadin Wong, thought she was foolish. "Why are you fighting it?" Wong would tell her. Lam said Wong's advice to her was that she should take whatever role she could get.

Wong's black and white view of the industry -- she once suggested that Lam consider breast implants -- was hard for Lam to accept, and she went searching for another agent.

But a few years ago, after making a successful career out of dancing, singing and acting, Lam returned to Wong's agency with a different attitude.

She said she now realizes that Asian-American actors should not automatically dismiss a casting call for a prostitute or gang member just because it might be construed as a stereotype.

The character might actually be brimming with individuality and humanity. "By embracing those stereotypes, you're breaking them ultimately for generations after that," she added.

Arista, an actor, writer and producer of two off-Broadway plays, said she rejects all roles that perpetuate an Asian stereotype.

She has focused her work on writing and producing, she says, with the goal of creating characters for Asian-Americans that have a universal appeal, much like the characters in the novel-turned-film "The Joy Luck Club."

Arista agreed with Hahn that Asian-American males had been especially under-represented, and that the roles they played don't portray them in a positive or "desirous" light.

"We've still got to be fighting," she said, adding that the recent flurry of martial arts films, while technically stunning, only perpetuates a belief that Asian-Americans can only play martial arts roles. "Asian-Americans can play more roles," she said.

Hahn said he gets into arguments with fellow actors every week over the subject. Many of his female friends in the business have even had eyelid surgery to make themselves look more Western.

But he believes altering your phyiscal appearance accomplishes little. "It's true, eyes are the most expressive part of your face,"he said. "The bigger the eyes, the more expression, the more beauty."

"But the key is to have attitude."