Vang was born in Fresno, California, four years after his Hmong parents emigrated from Thailand. He had five brothers and one sister. He resided in the Twin Cities area. He grew up in a neighborhood in Minneapolis that he described as "poor." He later lived in Robbinsdale, Minnesota. For his freshman year he attended Patrick Henry High School, and he was in the University of Minnesota's advanced program. He also attended Robbinsdale Armstrong High School in Plymouth, Minnesota. Vang, before being cast in Gran Torino, had planned to go into a premed program. Due to his role in Gran Torino, Vang considered getting into filmmaking. He attended Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. At Brown, Vang planned to pursue an acting career and study filmmaking and the Chinese language. He was also part of the Asian AmericanStudents Association at Brown. As a youth he mainly watched Asian films. In an interview, Vang said that from his early teenage years he had watched various Western films, A Clockwork Orange, Heaven & Earth, Heavenly Creatures, , and other war movies. He also watched Clint Eastwoodwesterns, and had been a fan of Eastwood for a long period of time. Vang owned copies of several films starring Eastwood, such as Dirty Harry, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and Letters from Iwo Jima. Vang said that he had a preference for Asian films, and specifically the original language versions with English subtitles. In an interview he criticized the film Heaven & Earth. By 2010, Vang had become an activist. Vang collaborates on social justice film, Internet, and print products with Louisa Schein, a Hmong media expert, Va-Megn Thoj, a Hmong filmmaker, and Ly Chong Thong Jalao, a University of California Santa Barbara Ph.D. student. Vang travels around the United States doing public speaking regarding Gran Torino and post-Gran Torino issues related to the Hmong community. In 2011, Vang wrote an editorial criticizing a KDWB radio comedy segment, saying that it offensively portrayed Hmong people.
Filmography and television
Since Gran Torino Vang acted in independent films and stage performances. Vang acted in a YouTube parody of one scene in Gran Torino, titled "Thao Does Walt: Lost Scenes from Gran Torino." In addition, he acted in "Anatomically Incorrect," "Fallen City," and "Sunset on Dawn."
