Child of War, Man of Music : Movies: Tai Thai of Garden Grove, who has a small part in ‘Heaven and Earth,’ does well enough as a pop singer to steer clear of stereotypical Asian roles.

The two careers of Tai Thai rarely intersect, but they reinforce each other in ways that allow him to follow his conscience and make a living at the same time.

As an actor, the Garden Grove resident is slowly working his way into feature films; he has a small but pivotal role in Oliver Stone’s “Heaven and Earth,” which opens today at the Edwards Newport in Newport Beach and the AMC MainPlace Six in Santa Ana.

As a pop singer, he is a top draw in Vietnamese American communities across the United States and Europe. The singing isn’t making him rich--the market isn’t quite big enough for that--but it allows him enough freedom to turn down acting roles when he feels they play on Asian stereotypes.

That happened recently, when he turned down a sitcom role. “I didn’t feel right about the character,” he said during a recent interview at the Saigon Deli here. “I told myself, ‘I don’t have to do this. My singing will pay the rent.’ ”

Beyond that, he finds that singing helps keep him close to his roots: “It’s something that connects me with my community.”

He came to the United States from Vietnam with an older sister in 1975, at age 7. His parents were not able to escape during the fall of Saigon, and Thai did not see them again until 1984--a situation that in some ways parallels that of the character he plays in “Heaven and Earth.”

The film adapts the traumatic real-life story of Le Ly Hayslip, a Vietnamese rice farmer’s daughter who spent the war years as a hustler, a prostitute and a single mother before, at 19, marrying an American businessman and moving with him to San Diego. There, the brutality of her life continued as a battered wife.

Thai plays Hayslip’s illegitimate son Jimmy in a scene that finds the character going to Vietnam and meeting his biological father for the first time. Thai met the real-life Jimmy, who now lives in San Diego, and asked him about his emotions on meeting his father.

“Ironically, he felt the same way I did (on being reunited with his own parents), which is nothing,” Thai said. Thai remembers being unsure how to act: “I watched my older brother and sister. I just followed what they did.”

At the time, he said, “I felt really bad, like, is it me? Is it normal?” But he has come to know his parents again and now shares a home with them after several years of living on his own or with siblings. “Actually, my parents moved in with me,” he said with a smile.

Thai spent five weeks in Thailand in October shooting his scenes, and though he felt detached when reunited with his own parents, he found that shooting the movie was in many ways an emotional experience.

“Anytime I do (a role) like that, it just hits home,” said Thai, who also appeared on an episode of the TV series “China Beach.” “It’s like a lot of therapy. . . . All these feelings start coming back, all these emotions.”

Stone shot the reunion scene both with dialogue and without, and ended up using the scene without. “Oliver thought that without the dialogue, it was much stronger,” Thai said.

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Although Thai professes a lifelong interest in performing, his acting career started almost accidentally. He was working in a clothing boutique on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles at age 18 when an agent approached him about modeling. He started working in print ads and graduated to commercials and eventually to television roles on sitcoms and in drama series.

He moved into feature films with a small role in “The Waterdance” (1992), which starred Eric Stoltz, and then was in the Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle “Universal Soldier.” He shrugs off “Universal Soldier” with an embarrassed giggle (“it was good pay”) but is proud of his work in the critically praised “Waterdance”: “It’s a great little film. It’s too bad it didn’t get a wider release.”

His biggest movie role to date is in the independent feature “Killing Zoe,” also starring Stoltz and directed by Roger Avery, an associate of writer/director Quentin Tarantino. It will premiere next month at the Sundance festival in Utah.

Thai plays a member of a gang in Paris involved in a bank robbery gone haywire. The film “has the feel of ‘A Clockwork Orange,’ ” he said. “It’s not your everyday kind of movie. . . . I love independent films. You can take more chances, more risks.”

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One of the most encouraging things about his role in “Killing Zoe,” he added, is that it “wasn’t written for an Asian actor.” It is difficult for Asian actors to find work, he said, particularly in roles that aren’t race-specific, but he sees signs of improvement. “I think it’s been a good year for us, for the Asian community.”

Meanwhile, he continues with his music career, traveling to concerts most weekends when he isn’t working on movies, and often recording or making music videos during the week. The recordings mostly serve to promote his concert career, which is, he said, where the money is (he is singing in New Orleans this weekend).

Thai sings in Vietnamese, French and English in a style he admits is “bubble gum,” but he said he is trying to work out of that mold.

His music has made it to Vietnam, he has been told (“I don’t know how it got back there, but it got back there”).

Some Vietnamese Americans have gone back there to perform, but Thai says he is not ready emotionally: “I just want to wait until the time is right.”