As of 2024, Ken Jeong’s net worth is estimated to be between $14 – $16 million USD.
Kendrick Kang-Joh Jeong, an American producer, actor, writer, stand-up comedian and doctor, gained fame for his roles as Leslie Chow in The Hangover movies and Ben Chang in the sitcom Community on NBC.
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He was born in Detroit, Michigan on July 13, 1969 to South Korean immigrants D.K. and Young Jeong. At the age of four, he along with his family relocated to Greensboro, North Carolina, where he was raised.
Jeong studied at Walter Hines Page High School, where he joined the regional quiz bowl competition, was selected for the student council, and performed as a violinist in the school’s orchestra. He completed his studies in 1986 when he was just 16 years old, and subsequently received the Youth of the Year award from Greensboro’s Boys & Girls Club for his remarkable accomplishments at such a young age.
Jeong began exploring acting in his second year at Duke University, where he was studying on a pre-med track. He completed his undergraduate degree at Duke in 1990.
Jeong first got involved in theater and improv during his time as a medical student in North Carolina. He frequently participated in open mic nights in the Raleigh-Durham area, showcasing his talent at venues like Charlie Goodnights in Raleigh and Tootie’s Durham Comedy Club.
Additionally, he hosted The Comedy Spot programming series at Duke University, which was organized by his friend Kendrick Jahng. During this time, he had the opportunity to perform before renowned comedians such as Margaret Cho and Jeff Dunham.
Jeong earned his M.D. from The University of North Carolina School of Medicine in 1995. That same year, he won the Big Easy Laff-Off, a major comedy competition, while completing his residency as a physician in the vibrant city of New Orleans.
Judges, including NBC president Brandon Tartikoff and The Improv founder Budd Friedman, strongly encouraged Jeong to relocate to Los Angeles.
In 1998, Jeong relocated to Los Angeles and worked as a doctor specializing in internal medicine at a Kaiser Permanente hospital in Woodland Hills for a number of years. Alongside his medical career, he started doing stand-up comedy regularly at comedy clubs like The Improv and Laugh Factory.
This eventually led to him making several appearances on popular television shows such as The Office, MADtv, Entourage and Curb Your Enthusiasm.
He is widely recognized for his roles in The Hangover movie series and the sitcom Community, and also starred in the popular movies Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Crazy Rich Asians, among many others.
Jeong married his wife Tran Ho, a family medicine physician, in 2004. They welcomed twin daughters in 2007, Zooey and Alexa. Jeong humorously referenced his wife in the title of his debut comedy special You Complete Me, Ho, which became available for streaming on Netflix in 2019.
Quotes from the equally intelligent and hilarious, internal medicine physician-turned-comedian-and-actor:
“All right, my whole point is — the moral of the story — is that I’m a rich person who just got richer. Yay, me! Yay, me!”
“During the day, I was a doctor. At night, you know, I was a comic. And it was really just to let off some steam. It just became my golf, you know, in many ways. Most doctors have golf as a hobby. Mine was doing comedy.”
“Every child is different. They say acting is reacting, and I think it’s the same for being a parent. It’s about listening to your child… different personalities, different expectations, different goals. I think the key to being a good parent is to individualize your love for each child.”
“Everyone here has a unique story.”
“Figure out what your act two is, and embrace the change. Embrace the twists and the unexpected turns. Keep doing what you do.”
“Find your own passion and your own love, and be unique in your own way.”
“I always had a passion for performing, so even when I was in college (I was pre-med)… yeah, a lot of people don’t know this, but I was doing a lot of theater as well and I had gotten bitten by the acting bug in college. I never did any acting in high school or anything like that. I didn’t know I even had it in me to perform. So, I was definitely a late bloomer, and I didn’t know where I was going to go with this. All I knew was I just had a deep, deep love of performing. I felt like I had an aptitude for it, but more importantly, I had a passion for it.”
“I always just loved to laugh. I always just loved it as a kid. Comedy was always an escape for me; I just happened to be a doctor.”
“I always just try to find a way to maximize whatever opportunity I have before me, but I also, I don’t want to limit myself to those things that I haven’t done. There might be some things similar to what I’ve done before that I can find some unique form of joy. So to me, I just want to find a way to just maximize the joy of whatever scenario.”
“I always say Knocked Up opened the doors and Hangover just burst it wide open. To this day, it’s still surreal. And my wife’s a doctor. All our friends are doctors—our close friends. And it’s just that I have an odd job now. I think I’m like a doctor who had a detour, and I just have an odd job.”
“I do think Dr. Ken, at its heart, is about a great doctor who’s a bit burned out. But even when I was a burned-out doctor, I was still happy and had a life outside of work.”
“I had a very complicated life, you know, or at least in my head I did…where I was in medicine, on a medical track, and it was a very, very heavy time because I basically had two loves and two passions and how to reconcile that? The only advice I could give is: Just don’t ever think about the end result…doesn’t matter.”
“I have a very simple approach in career: You work with the people you love. When you’re working with your friends, it doesn’t feel like it’s work.”
“I keep moving no matter what, and I encourage you, good times and bad, keep moving, keep finding your passion, and I honestly say to every single soul, ‘If I can do this, and if I can do what I want, so can you.’ And you guys, you have the light, and the future, and the universe ahead of you. And, honestly, your persistence and your passion is the most important talent to have.”
“I never let on I was a comedian. I never acted out. It was really important to me, like, to not be Patch Adams. I was so super serious as a doctor, I would bark orders to my nurses. I was hardcore. I wanted to make sure I did my job right. I was perfectly trained to be a physician. You know, it wasn’t a fluke. I worked hard at it.”
“I think, at the end of the day, you should just be judged by your work, not on what effect it might have on the world or your community.”
“I think critics tend to think that comedy is freakin’ math, like this is the Pythagorean Theorem. They’re not sophisticated enough to know that comedy is fluid, that it evolves, and these organic evolutions are what you have to embrace.”
“I think everyone’s different, but in comedy, I try to do my scene to make the director and the other actors laugh. If I can make them laugh and we have the same sensibility, then I’m on the right page.”
“I think my legacy as a parent is encouraging my kids to think outside of the box. My whole livelihood is thinking outside the box and not doing something that’s typical, and I want my family, I want my kids to embrace their uniqueness, even if it’s something no one else does, or no one else thinks you can do.”
“I think working hard is my biggest talent. There are always people who are funnier and more talented than I am, but I don’t take anything for granted and I commit myself 100 percent to each of my roles.”
“I wake up in the morning crying, and I’ll tell you why: It’s because I look at myself in the mirror, and then I say, ‘It’ll get better.’”
“I was a very efficient doctor. I would get rewarded with a lot more patients. By the end of my medical career, I had maybe 2,000 patients in my practice.”
“I went to Duke, which is a ‘top five’ school…not community college…but whatever. I wasn’t sued out of medicine; I wasn’t arbitrated out of the profession.”
“If I can still make it back home by eight to put the kids in bed, then wow — I am having my cake and eating it, too. Then I get to hang out with my wife for the rest of the night. That is my dream. That is all I really wanted.”
“If you’re a persistent soul artistically, you’ll find the truth of your art.”
“I’m definitely a people pleaser. I like people to be happy around me and be comfortable. I go out of my way, sometimes to a fault, to make sure everyone is okay.”
“I’m not lying, every single project I’ve done, they’ve all been great.”
“I’m not really a ‘helicopter dad’ or ‘tiger dad’ per se. If anything, I try to not do that, but I get anxious while I’m trying to be relaxed about raising my kids.”
“I’m on board with this too, that we tell our kids, ‘Look, I have an odd job, and the job is just slightly different but the principles of life is the same.’”
“I’m really trying not to feel I’m getting spoiled, because the way I look at it, I realize just how fortunate I am.”
“I’m the guy that no one knows, but everyone’s like, ‘You’re that guy in that film thing.’”
“I’m very blessed that I have such a supportive wife who is secure with letting me embarrass myself.”
“It’s so important to keep it grounded. I totally understand what that means.”
“Medicine really matured me as a person because, as a physician, you’re obviously dealing with life and death issues…issues much more serious than what we’re talking about in entertainment. You can’t get more serious than life and death. And if you can handle that, you can handle anything.”
“Own that s***, boy.”
“Some people may know this, some people not: I used to be a doctor… and then I said, ‘F*** that s***! I’ll be naked and famous in a movie…make some moolah.’ And that is what makes America great.”
“Take chances…be brave.”
“The best advice came from my wife. She told me that life is short, and don’t be afraid to take chances.”
“The only thing I have to offer in life is my passion. Find your passion.”
“There will be good, and there will be bad, but embrace that because you never know what happens.”
“There’s always downsides to every journey, but because of my education, I have this core stability that makes me unshakable no matter what happens, and I’m also able to take the good with the bad.”
“There’s really no substitute for working hard.”
“They say everything happens for a reason. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know everything happens. And it’s up to you to maximize the reality of your situation.”
“We want them to pursue what they want to do. We want them to be disciplined at what they do, we want them to excel in school, but we also want them to follow their passions, whether it be in academics or in the arts or in athletics, whatever it is.”
“We’re all conditioned to work hard, and it’s not just an Asian thing; it’s an Asian American thing. You maximize the little opportunity you have, and I’ve made a career.”
“What I’m learning as I get older…it’s just you know, man, there’s just nothing wrong with going with the flow and finding enjoyment and opportunity and happiness there because you’ll get it, and you’ll get happiness in the most unexpected places.”
“When I finished my residency in New Orleans, I went to L.A. where I would work as a doctor during the day, and then at night I would actually go to The Improv and do stand-up, all the while kind of cultivating my comedy resume.”
“You can have all the tools in the world but if you don’t genuinely believe in yourself, it’s useless.”
“You can’t get through medical school if you don’t have a strong will and a strong constitution.”
“You can’t get to art unless you master the science. Once you’ve mastered the science, you have a flow, a personality, a sense of self within the science, and that becomes an art form.”
“You just can’t take the doctor out of you.”
“You know what my biggest talent is? It’s persistence. I do not give up. I do not give up anything. If I’m passionate about it, I do not give up. I will stay until the very end to see something happen.”