Born in Texas, actor Aaron Yoo attended the University of Pennsylvania and initially pursued a career in writing before a summer workshop in Shakespeare opened him up to the theretofore untapped challenge of drama. (Yoo later admitted that he unequivocally bombed in the said workshop, and that the difficulty of the experience compelled him to travel to New York and learn the acting craft.) The performer achieved his career breakthrough in 2007, with a plethora of supporting roles in A-listers that often cast him as best friends and/or emotional supports for the lead characters. That year alone, Yoo played the buddy of the lead character in the teen-oriented thriller Disturbia (2007), the hyperkinetic friend of a high-school debate team member in Rocket Science (2007), and a WWII-era Japanese teenager who must contend with extreme bigotry and discrimination when he and his family are unjustly thrown into an internment camp in Desmond Nakano's inspirational drama American Pastime (2007). In 2008, Yoo portrayed Choi, an Asian-American MIT student and member of a Las Vegas card-counting ring, in Robert Luketic's inspired-by-real-events thriller 21.