The first one I did was an action film with Sammo Hung and George Lam, but I had the usual female role for that time: you know, damsel in distress, rescued by the hero.
If you see a bad live action film, what are the conclusions you draw? Typically, it is that they made a bunch of mistakes, a bad script, wrong casting. You get into 2D, and you get a few films that are not strong films. And what is the conclusion? That it's 2D? I beg to differ. It's a convenient excuse, but it's just wrong.
Action films can be like watching paint dry. You can just die in the trailer waiting for them to set up a shot, then you go out for a few minutes or an hour of endurance testing.
Action films unfortunately don't let you spend a lot of time sitting. So you don't have much time to create something indelible or unique.
It's all choreographed; it's a routine. So I told everyone I really wanted to try fighting in action films. I had no stunt experience, but I had the dance background, and I was very agile and coordinated. And the best thing about being a newcomer to acting is you can afford to try new things.
I mean, I love action films, you know, good action films.
If you come down to it, there's only a handful of worlds that action films live in. You have your car chases, your gun fights, and your fights.
Unfortunately, any girl - unless you're playing the action hero - is going to end up at some point handcuffed, gagged, and waiting for the hero to save her.
When you get to the point where you're established enough that people link you with something, especially being an action hero babe, it's awesome. Because then you can fight the battles and have the crossbows and wrestle with swords and ride the horses because you're already believable; people see you in that genre.
Playing Mark Antony in Julius Caesar was the most thrilling thing I've done. You get these speeches that were written for men, and you're running around like an action hero, climbing scaffolding and beating people up. It was very freeing.
It's always fun to play someone like an action hero that you always wanted to play as a child. I think every young boy loves that as a kid.
When you're a young man, a young boy, all you want to be is that action hero; you want to be the James Bond, and I got to do that for a bit, and that was great.
If an actor is going to be an action hero, do it in a Robert Rodriguez movie, because that guy is going to make you look like a million bucks.
A live action movie is work, and an animated movie is you showing up in your pajamas once every three months, or in my case, just a splash of baby powder. It's not any kind of heavy lifting.
In 'The Condemned,' if you saw the movie, that's all me; I'll go toe to toe with anyone in an action movie.
The funny thing about my films is that you can make little piles of them. You could make little piles of the movie that were family movies, you could make a little art movie pile, you could make a little action movie pile.
You can't make an action movie without action, and so, you can't make a romance movie without romance.
I think what a lot of action movies lose these days, especially the ones that deal with fantasy, is you stop caring at some point because you've lost human scale.
Brad will tell you. He puts a movie on, I'm asleep in 10 minutes. I have no patience. But the kids love action movies with comedy, Jackie Chan and all that.
Some of my favorite movies are action movies. You want something good to say. That comes from good writing. But writing is not a skill I possess, unfortunately.
