“I thought he was Chinese,” he says, his voice incredulous. “His character’s Chinese! I swore to God he was Chinese.”

Actor C.S. Lee is having difficulty digesting the fact that Rex Lee of HBO’s “Entourage” is a fellow Korean American.

Ahh, but it’s all a bit ironic, since the former Lee is himself often mistaken for Chinese, the ethnicity of his character Harry Tang on NBC’s “Chuck.” And the 35-year-old spends the other half of his working days playing Japanese American Vincent Masuka on Showtime’s “Dexter.”

But really, ethnic background aside, what Lee really wants to be playing right now is the back nine. Which is why he’s here at Majestic Golf Land on the corner of Melrose and Vermont in Los Angeles. A driving range on the edge of Koreatown, it’s the closest thing to a fairway he can get if he needs a quick golf rush. Not far from his home in Silver Lake, this place has become one of his favorite haunts, thanks to the automated machine where a new ball magically rises on a tee after every swing.

“Golf is a meditation for me,” Lee says as he situates his blue suede Pumas on the artificial turf, then nestles a Calloway driver next to the ball. “It’s a good way to get focused.”

The swing that comes next is far from smooth, and his ball goes hurtling to the right. It’s not pretty.

Lee doesn’t flinch. He’s only been playing for a year. He has never taken lessons, just watches the Golf Channel. He plays two or three times a week and doesn’t use a cart, preferring to walk the course and think about his next shot.

As a kid in Vancouver, Wash., Charlie Soong Lee preferred a sport at the other end of the spectrum: football. He played running back all through junior high and as a freshman for Hudson’s Bay High School.

“Then my sophomore year came around, and I was like, ‘Hey Ted, you grew! Wow!’ ‘Oh hey Bill, you grew too!’”

Relegated to playing quarterback for the JV team, Lee started looking into other activities. All signs pointed to the stage, especially since he had become an art house film buff. It also didn’t hurt that his school had a decent theater program, and that even jocks were known to juggle acting with practice.

His first play was Larry Shue’s “The Foreigner,” and he played a Ku Klux Klan member with no lines.

“At the end, we’d come out for the curtain call, I take off my hood and people would say, ‘Heeeey,’” he says, laughing.

Lee ended up getting a full scholarship to study theater at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. His father, a mechanic, and mother, a seamstress, were relieved they wouldn’t need to help with tuition, but were anxious about his career path. Then Lee announced he’d be heading to Yale to pursue an M.F.A.