[3] He became an informal ambassador to the Korean-American immigrant community in California and became one of its first leaders, founding the Mutual Assistance Society (Kongrip Hyophoe/공립협회), the first Korean political organization in America.

When he was in high school, Ahn visited the set of the film The Thief of Bagdad where he met Douglas Fairbanks.

He went to work as an elevator operator in Los Angeles to pay back the debt and help support his family.

He organized visits by foreign dignitaries, including Princess Der Ling of China, Indian journalist Chaman Lal and archeologist-explorer Robert B. Stacey-Judd.

He appeared in the Bing Crosby film Anything Goes, though the director Lewis Milestone had initially rejected him because his English was too good for the part.

He starred opposite Anna May Wong in Daughter of Shanghai (1937) and King of Chinatown (1939), becoming the first self-represented on-screen Asian American romantic couple of sound-era Hollywood cinema.

Ahn appeared in Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing, Around the World in Eighty Days, Thoroughly Modern Millie and Paradise, Hawaiian Style, with Elvis Presley.

After traveling to South Korea in the 1950s, Ahn considered emigrating there and acting in Korean films, but decided against it due to his unusual idiolect.

A Presbyterian, Ahn felt that the Taoist homilies his character quoted did not contradict his own religious faith.

Ahn worked with the South Korean government to establish a park to honor his father and was able to have his parents buried there.

[citation needed] Ahn's younger brother Philson had a minor acting career, and was best known as "Prince Tallen" in the twelve-episode serial Buck Rogers.

His sister Susan was the first female gunnery officer in the United States Navy, eventually rising to the rank of Lieutenant and working for both Naval Intelligence and the fledgling National Security Agency.

Hye Seung Chung, an associate professor of film and media studies at Colorado State University, writes of Ahn that he “remains a true pioneer, one of the few performers of Asian descent to survive the racist casting politics of studio-era filmmaking and make a transition to the Television Age.